CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Proem 1 

WooK  I. 

OKAPTER 

I.    The  Shipwrecked  Stranger 9 

II,    Breakfast  for  Love 22 

III.    The  Barber's  Shop 26 

rV.    First  Impressions 37 

V.    The  Blind  Scholar  and  his  Daughter 41 

VI.    Dawning  Hopes 54: 

VII.    A  Learned  Squabble 69 

VIII.    A  Face  in  the  Crowd 75 

IX.    A  Man's  Ransom 87 

X.    Under  the  Plane-Tree 94 

XL    Tito's  Dilemma 105 

XII.    The  Prize  is  nearly  grasped 109 

XIII.  The  Shadow  of  Nemesis 120 

XIV.  The  Peasants'  Fair 127 

XV.    The  Dying  Message 141 

XVI.     A  Florentine  Joke 150 

XVII.    Under  the  Loggia 163 

XVIII.     The  Portrait 169 

XIX.    The  Old  Man's  Hope 175 

XX.     The  Day  of  the  Betrothal 179 


lY 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 


XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV. 

XLV. 

XLVI. 

XLVII. 

XLVIII. 

XLIX. 

L. 

LI. 


l0jCrU   II. 

PAGE 

Flokence  expects  a  Guest 188 

The  Pkisoners 195 

After-Thoughts 202 

Inside  the  Duomo 206 

Outside  the  Duomo 212 

The  Garment  of  Fear 216 

The  Young  Wife 221 

The  Painted  Record 231 

A  Moment  of  Triumph 236 

The  Avenger's  Secret 243 

Fruit  is  Seed 252 

A  Revelation 257 

Baldassarre  makes  an  Acquaintance      ,    .     .  266 

No  Place  for  Repentance 274 

What  Florence  was  thinking  of 285 

Ariadne  discrowns  herself 289 

The  Tabernacle  unlocked 299 

The  Black  Marks  become  Magical 303 

A  Supper  in  the  Rucellai  Gardens     ....  309 

An  Arresting  Voice 325 

Coming  Back 333 

Ixroll  III. 

Romola  in  her  Place 336 

The  Unseen  Madonna 343 

The  Visible  Madonna 349 

At  the  Barber's  Shop 355 

By  a  Street  Lamp 363 

Check 371 

Counter-Check 374 

The  Pyramid  of  Vanities 380 

Tessa  abroad  and  at  Home 385 

MONNA   BrIGIDA'S   CONVERSION 395 


CHAPTER 

LII. 

LIII. 

LIV. 

LV. 

LVI. 

LVII. 

LVIII. 

LIX. 

LX. 

LXI. 

LXII. 

LXIII. 

LXIV. 

LXV. 

LXVI. 

LXVII. 

LXVIII. 

LXIX. 

LXX. 

LXXI. 

LXXII. 


CONTENTS,  y. 

PAGK 

A  Prophetess 4qq 

On  San  Miniato 4()g 

The  Evening  and  the  Mokning 411 

Waiting 415 

The  Other  Wife 418 

Why  Tito  was  Safe 429 

A  Final  Understanding 435 

Pleading 440 

The  Scaffold 449 

Drifting  Away 455 

The  Bknediction 459 

Ripening  Schemes 4^4 

The  Prophet  in  his  Cell 474 

The  Trial  by  Fire 482 

A  Masque  of  the  Furies 490 

Waiting  by  the  River 494 

Romola's  Waking 500 

Homeward 5Q9 

Meeting  Again 512 

The  Confession 517 

The  Last  Silence 523 

Epilogue 507 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 
Thk   first   kiss Frontispiece. 

Portrait  of  George  Eliot Title. 

Dante 9 

The  Campanile  of  Giotto 29 

Lorenzo  de  Medici 36 

Interior  or  the  Church  of  San  Lorenzo 116 

Savonarola 146 

Fa9ade  of  the  Cathedral  of  Santa   Maria  del  Fiore  (The 

DuoMo) 151 

The  Duomo  —  Brunelleschi's  Dome 198 

Detail  of  the  Facade  of  the  Duomo 206 

Court  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio 287 

Church  and  Piazza  of  Santa  Maria  Novella 303 

Ponte  Vecchio 339 

Lion  —  Loggia  dei  Lanzi 382 

Tower  and  cloisters  of  San  Marco 440 

Interior  of  the  Church  of  Santa  Croce 464 

Savonarola's  cell 474 

Cellini's  statue  of  Perseus  in  the  Loggia  dei  Lanzi 488 


ROMOLA. 


PROEM. 


More  than  three  centuries  and  a  half  ago,  in  the  mid- 
springtime  of  1492,  we  are  sure  that  the  angel  of  the  dawn, 
as  he  travelled  with  broad  slow  wing  from  the  Levant  to  the 
Pillars  of  Hercules,  and  from  the  summits  of  the  Caucasus 
across  all  the  snowy  Alpine  ridges  to  the  dark  nakedness  of 
the  Western  Isles,  saw  nearly  the  same  outline  of  firm  land 
and  unstable  sea  —  saw  the  same  great  mountain  shadows  on 
the  same  valleys  as  he  has  seen  to-day  —  saw  olive  mounts, 
and  pine  forests,  and  the  broad  plains  green  with  young  corn 
or  rain-freshened  grass  —  saw  the  domes  and  spires  of  cities 
rising  by  the  river-sides  or  mingled  with  the  sedge-like  masts 
on  the  many-curved  sea-coast,  in  the  same  spots  where  they 
rise  to-day.  And  as  the  faint  light  of  his  course  pierced  into 
the  dwellings  of  men,  it  fell,  as  now,  on  the  rosy  warmth  of 
nestling  children ;  on  the  haggard  waking  of  sorrow  and 
sickness ;  on  the  hasty  uprising  of  the  hard-handed  laborer ; 
and  on  the  late  sleep  of  the  night-student,  who  had  been 
questioning  the  stars  or  the  sages,  or  his  own  soul,  for  that 
hidden  knowledge  which  would  break  through  the  barrier  of 
man's  brief  life,  and  show  its  dark  path,  that  seemed  to  bend 
no  whither,  to  be  an  arc  in  an  immeasurable  circle  of  light 
and  glory.  The  great  river-courses  which  have  shaped  the 
lives  of  men  have  hardly  changed ;  and  those  other  streams, 
the  life-currents  that  ebb  and  flow  in  human  hearts,  pulsate  to 
the  same  great  needs,  the  same  great  loves  and  terrors.  As 
our  thought  follows  close  in  the  slow  wake  of  the  dawn,  we 
are  impressed  with  the  broad  sameness  of  the  human  lot, 
which  never  alters  in  the  main  headings  of  its  history  — 
hunger  and  labor,  seed-time  and  harvest,  love  and  death. 

Even  if,  instead  of  following  the  dim  daybreak,  our 
imagination  pauses  on  a  certain  historical  spot  and  awaits 
the  fuller  morning,  we  may  see  a  world-famous  city,  which 


2  ROM  OLA. 

has  hardly  changed  its  outline  since  the  days  of  Colnmbus, 
seeming  to  stand  as  an  almost  unviolated  symbol,  amidst  the 
flux  of  human  things,  to  remind  us  that  we  still  resemble  the 
men  of  the  past  more  than  we  differ  from  them,  as  the  great 
mechanical  principles  on  which  those  domes  and  towers  were 
raised  must  make  a  likeness  in  human  building  that  will  be 
broader  and  deeper  than  all  possible  change.  And  doubtless, 
if  the  spirit  of  a  Florentine  citizen,  whose  eyes  were  closed 
for  the  last  time  while  Columbus  was  still  waiting  and 
arguing  for  the  three  poor  vessels  Avith  which  he  was  to  set 
sail  from  the  port  of  Palos,  could  return  from  the  shades  and 
pause  where  our  thought  is  pausing,  he  would  believe  that 
there  must  still  be  fellowship  and  understanding  for  him 
among  the  inheritors  of  his  birthplace. 

Let  us  suppose  that  such  a  Shade  has  been  permitted  to 
revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  golden  morning,  and  is  standing 
once  more  on  the  famous  hill  of  San  Miniato,  which  overlooks 
Florence  from  the  south. 

The  Spirit  is  clothed  in  his  habit  as  he  lived :  the  folds  of 
his  well-lined  black  silk  garment  or  lucco  hang  in  grave 
unbroken  lines  from  neck  to  ankle  ;  his  plain  cloth  cap,  with 
its  becchetto,  or  long  hanging  strip  of  drapery,  to  serve  as  a 
scarf  in  case  of  need,  surmounts  a  penetrating  face,  not, 
perhaps,  very  handsome,  but  with  a  firm,  well-cut  mouth,  kept 
distinctly  human  by  a  close-shaven  lip  and  chin.  It  is  a  face 
charged  with  memories  of  a  keen  and  various  life  passed 
below  there  on  the  banks  of  the  gleaming  river ;  and  as  he 
looks  at  the  scene  before  him,  the  sense  of  familiarity  is  so 
much  stronger  than  the  perception  of  change,  that  he  thinki 
it  might  be  possible  to  descend  once  more  amongst  the  streets, 
and  take  up  that  busy  life  where  he  left  it.  For  it  is  not  only 
the  mountains  and  the  westward-bending  river  that  he 
recognizes  ;  not  only  the  dark  sides  of  Mount  Morello  opposite 
to  him,  and  the  long  valley  of  the  Arno  that  seems  to  stretch 
its  gray  low-tufted  luxuriance  to  the  far-off  ridges  of  Carrara ; 
and  the  steep  height  of  Fiesole,  with  its  crown  of  monastic 
walls  and  cypresses ;  and  all  the  green  and  gray  slopes 
sprinkled  with  villas  which  he  can  name  as  he  looks  at  them. 
He  sees  other  familiar  objects  much  closer  to  his  daily  walks. 
For  though  he  misses  the  seventy  or  more  towers  that  once 
surmounted  the  walls,  and  encircled  the  city  as  with  a  regal 
diadem,  his  eyes  will  not  dwell  on  that  blank  ;  they  are  drawn 
irresistibly  to  the  unique  tower  springing,  like  a  tall  flower- 
stem  drawn  towards  the  sun,  from  the  square  turreted  mass  of 


PROEM.  3 

the  Old  Palace  in  the  very  heart  of  the  city  —  the  tower  that 
looks  none  the  worse  for  the  four  centuries  that  have  passed 
since  he  used  to  walk  under  it.  The  great  dome,  too,  greatest 
in  the  world,  which,  in  his  early  boyhood,  had  been  only  a  dar- 
ing thought  in  the  mind  of  a  small,  quick-eyed  man  —  there  it 
raises  its  large  curves  still,  eclipsing  the  hills.  And  the  well- 
known  bell-towers  —  Giotto's,  with  its  distant  hint  of  rich 
color,  and  the  graceful-spired  Badia,  and  the  rest  —  he  looked 
at  them  all  from  the  shoulder  of  his  nurse. 

"  Surely,"  he  thinks,  "  Florence  can  still  ring  her  bells  with 
the  solemn  hammer-sound  that  used  to  beat  on  the  hearts  of 
her  citizens  and  strike  out  the  fire  there.  And  here,  on  the 
right,  stands  the  long  dark  mass  of  Santa  Croce,  where  we 
buried  our  famous  dead,  laying  the  laurel  on  their  cold  brows 
and  fanning  them  with  the  breath  of  praise  and  of  banners. 
But  Santa  Croce  had  no  spire  then :  we  Florentines  were  too 
full  of  great  building  projects  to  carry  them  all  out  in  stone 
and  marble  ;  we  had  our  frescoes  and  our  shrines  to  pay  for, 
not  to  speak  of  rapacious  condottieri,  bribed  royalty,  and  pur- 
chased territories,  and  our  facades  and  spires  must  needs  wait. 
But  what  architect  can  the  Frati  Minori  ^  have  employed  to 
build  that  spire  for  them  ?  If  it  had  been  built  in  my  day, 
Filippo  Brunelleschi  or  Michelozzo  would  have  devised  some- 
thing of  another  fashion  than  that  —  something  worthy  to 
crown  the  church  of  Arnolfo." 

At  this  the  Spirit,  with  a  sigh,  lets  his  eyes  travel  on  to  the 
city  walls,  and  now  he  dwells  on  the  change  there  with  wonder 
at  these  modern  times.  Why  have  five  out  of  the  eleven 
convenient  gates  been  closed  ?  And  why,  above  all,  should  the 
towers  have  been  levelled  that  were  once  a  glory  and  defence  ? 
Is  the  world  become  so  peaceful,  then,  and  do  Florentines 
dwell  in  such  harmony,  that  there  are  no  longer  conspiracies  to 
bring  ambitious  exiles  home  again  with  armed  bands  at  their 
back  ?  These  are  difilcult  questions  :  it  is  easier  and  pleas- 
anter  to  recognize  the  old  than  to  account  for  the  new.  And 
there  flows  Arno,  with  its  bridges  just  where  they  used  to  be 
—  the  Ponte  Vecchio,  least  like  other  bridges  in  the  world, 
laden  with  the  same  quaint  shops  where  our  Spirit  remembers 
lingering  a  little  on  his  way  perhaps  to  look  at  the  progress  of 
that  great  palace  which  Messer  Luca  Pitti  had  set  a-building 
with  huge  stones  got  from  the  Hill  of  Bogoli  ^  close  behind,  or 
perhaps  to  transact  a  little  business  with  the  cloth-dressers  in 
Oltrarno.    The  exorbitant  line  of  the  Pitti  roof  is  hidden  from 

1  The  Franciicans,  -'  Now  Boboli. 


4  ROMOLA. 

San  Miniato  ;  but  the  yearning  of  the  old  Florentine  is  not  to 
see  Messer  Luca's  too  ambitious  palace  which  he  built  unto 
himself;  it  is  to  be  down  among  those  narrow  streets  and 
busy  humming  Piazze  where  he  inherited  the  eager  life  of  his 
fathers.  Is  not  the  anxious  voting  with  black  and  white  beans 
still  going  on  down  there  ?  Who  are  the  priori  in  these 
months,  eating  soberly  regulated  official  dinners  in  the  Palazzo 
Vecchio,  with  removes  of  tripe  and  boiled  partridges,  seasoned 
by  practical  jokes  against  the  ill-fated  butt  among  those 
potent  signors  ?  Are  not  the  significant  banners  still  hung 
from  the  windows  —  still  distributed  with  decent  pomp  under 
Orcagna's  Loggia  every  two  months  ? 

Life  had  its  zest  for  the  old  Florentine  when  he,  too,  trod 
the  marble  steps  and  shared  in  those  dignities.  His  politics 
had  an  area  as  wide  as  his  trade,  which  stretched  from  Syria 
to  Britain,  but  they  had  also  the  passionate  intensity,  and  the 
detailed  practical  interest,  which  could  belong  only  to  a 
narrow  scene  of  corporate  action ;  only  to  the  members  of  a 
community  shut  in  close  by  the  hills  and  by  walls  of  six 
miles'  circuit,  where  men  knew  each  other  as  they  passed  in 
the  street,  set  their  eyes  every  day  on  the  memorials  of  their 
commonwealth,  and  were  conscious  of  having  not  simply  the 
right  to  vote,  but  the  chance  of  being  voted  for.  He  loved 
his  honors  and  his  gains,  the  business  of  his  counting-house, 
of  his  guild,  of  the  public  council-chamber ;  he  loved  his 
enmities  too,  and  fingered  the  white  bean  which  was  to  keep 
a  hated  name  out  of  the  bo7'sa  with  more  complacency  than  if 
it  had  been  a  golden  florin.  He  loved  to  strengthen  his 
family  by  a  good  alliance,  and  went  home  with  a  triumphant 
light  in  his  eyes  after  concluding  a  satisfactory  marriage  for 
his  son  or  daughter  under  his  favorite  loggia  in  the  evening 
cool ;  he  loved  his  game  at  chess  under  that  same  loggia,  and 
his  biting  jest,  and  even  his  coarse  joke,  as  not  beneath  the 
dignity  of  a  man  eligible  for  the  highest  magistracy.  He  had 
gained  an  insight  into  all  sorts  of  affairs  at  home  and  abroad : 
he  had  been  of  the  "  Ten  "  who  managed  the  war  department, 
of  the  "Eight "  who  attended  to  home  discipline,  of  the  Priori 
or  Signori  who  were  the  heads  of  the  executive  government ; 
he  had  even  risen  to  the  supreme  office  of  Gonfaloniere ;  he 
had  made  one  in  embassies  to  the  Pope  and  to  the  Venetians  ; 
and  he  had  been  commissary  to  the  hired  army  of  the  Republic, 
directing  the  inglorious  bloodless  battles  in  which  no  man 
died  of  brave  breast  wounds  —  virtuosi  col2)i  —  but  only  of 
casual  falls  and  tramplings.     And  in  this  way  he  had  learned 


PROEM.  5 

to  distrust  men  without  bitterness ;  looking  on  life  mainly  as 
a  game  of  skill,  but  not  dead  to  traditions  of  heroism  and 
clean-handed  honor.  For  the  human  soul  is  hospitable,  and 
will  entertain  confiicting  sentiments  and  contradictory  opinions 
with  much  impartiality.  It  was  his  pride  besides,  that  he  was 
duly  tinctured  with  the  learning  of  his  age,  and  judged  not 
altogether  with  the  vulgar,  but  in  harmony  with  the  ancients  : 
he,  too,  in  his  prime,  had  been  eager  for  the  most  correct 
manuscripts,  and  had  paid  many  florins  for  antique  vases  and 
for  disinterred  busts  of  the  ancient  immortals — some,  per- 
haps, truncis  naribus,  wanting  as  to  the  nose,  but  not  the  less 
authentic  ;  and  in  his  old  age  he  had  made  haste  to  look  at  the 
first  sheets  of  that  fine  Homer  which  was  among  the  early 
glories  of  the  Florentine  press.  But  he  had  not,  for  all  that, 
neglected  to  hang  up  a  waxen  image  or  double  of  himself 
under  the  protection  of  the  Madonna  Annunziata,  or  to 
do  penance  for  his  sins  in  large  gifts  to  the  shrines  of  saints 
whose  lives  had  not  been  modelled  on  the  study  of  the 
classics ;  he  had  not  even  neglected  making  liberal  bequests 
towards  buildings  for  the  Frati,  against  whom  he  had  levelled 
many  a  jest. 

For  the  Unseen  Powers  were  mighty.  Who  knew  —  who 
was  sure  —  that  there  was  any  name  given  to  them  behind 
which  there  was  no  angry  force  to  be  appeased,  no  inter- 
cessory pity  to  be  won  ?  Were  not  gems  medicinal,  though 
they  only  pressed  the  finger  ?  Were  not  all  things  charged 
with  occult  virtues  ?  Lucretius  might  be  right  —  he  was  an 
ancient,  and  a  great  poet ;  Luigi  Pulci,  too,  who  was  suspected 
of  not  believing  anything  from  the  roof  upward  {dal  tetto  in 
su),  had  very  much  the  air  of  being  right  over  the  supper- 
table,  when  the  wine  and  jests  were  circulating  fast,  though 
he  was  only  a  poet  in  the  vulgar  tongue.  There  were  even 
learned  personages  who  maintained  that  Aristotle,  wisest  of 
men  (unless,  indeed,  Plato  were  wiser  ?),  was  a  thoroughly 
irreligious  philosopher ;  and  a  liberal  scholar  must  entertain 
all  speculations.  But  the  negatives  might,  after  all,  prove 
false ;  nay,  seemed  manifestly  false,  as  the  circling  hours 
swept  past  him,  and  turned  round  with  graver  faces.  For 
had  not  the  world  become  Christian?  Had  he  not  been 
baptized  in  San  Giovanni,  where  the  dome  is  awful  with  the 
symbols  of  coming  judgment,  and  where  the  altar  bears  a 
crucified  Image  disturbing  to  perfect  complacency  in  one's 
self  and  the  world  ?  Our  resuscitated  Spirit  was  not  a  pagan 
philosopher,  nor  a  philosophizing  pagan  poet,  but  a   man    of 


6  ROM  OLA. 

the  fifteenth  century,  inheriting  its  strange  web  of  belief 
and  unbelief;  of  Epicurean  levity  and  fetichistic  dread;  of 
pedantic  impossible  ethics  uttered  by  rote,  and  crude  pas- 
sions acted  out  with  childish  impulsiveness ;  of  inclination 
towards  a  self-indulgent  paganism,  and  inevitable  subjection 
to  that  human  conscience  which,  in  the  unrest  of  a  new 
growth,  was  filling  the  air  with  strange  prophecies  and  pre- 
sentiments. 

He  had  smiled,  perhaps,  and  shaken  his  head  dubiously,  as 
he  heard  simple  folk  talk  of  a  Pope  Angelico,  who  was 
to  come  by  and  by  and  bring  in  a  new  order  of  things,  to 
purify  the  Church  from  simony,  and  the  lives  of  the  clergy 
from  scandal  —  a  state  of  affairs  too  different  from  what 
existed  under  Innocent  the  Eighth  for  a  shrewd  merchant  and 
politician  to  regard  the  prospect  as  worthy  of  entering  into  his 
calculations.  But  he  felt  the  evils  of  the  time,  nevertheless ; 
for  he  was  a  man  of  public  spirit,  and  public  spirit  can  never 
be  wholly  immoral,  since  its  essence  is  care  for  a  common 
good.  That  very  Quaresima  or  Lent  of  1492  in  which  he 
died,  still  in  his  erect  old  age,  he  had  listened  in  San  Lorenzo, 
not  without  a  mixture  of  satisfaction,  to  the  preaching  of  a 
Dominican  Friar,  named  Girolamo  Savonarola,  who  denounced 
with  a  rare  boldness  the  worldliness  and  vicious  habits  of  the 
clergy,  and  insisted  on  the  duty  of  Christian  men  not  to  live 
for  their  own  ease  when  wrong  was  triumphing  in  high  places, 
and  not  to  spend  their  wealth  in  outward  pomp  even  in  the 
churches,  when  their  fellow-citizens  were  suffering  from  want 
and  sickness.  The  Frate  carried  his  doctrine  rather  too  far 
for  elderly  ears ;  yet  it  was  a  memorable  thing  to  see  a 
preacher  move  his  audience  to  such  a  pitch  that  the  women 
even  took  off  their  ornaments,  and  delivered  them  up  to  be 
sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  needy. 

"  He  was  a  noteworthy  man,  that  Prior  of  San  Marco,  " 
thinks  our  Spirit ;  "  somewhat  arrogant  and  extreme,  perhaps, 
especially  in  his  denunciations  of  speedy  vengeance.  Ah, 
Iddio  non  paga  il  Sabato^ — the  wages  of  men's  sins  often 
linger  in  their  payment,  and  I  myself  saw  much  established 
wickedness  of  long-standing  prosperity.  But  a  Frate  Pre- 
dicatore  who  wanted  to  move  the  people  —  how  could  he  be 
moderate?  He  might  have  been  a  little  less  defiant  and  curt, 
though,  to  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  whose  family  had  been  the 
very  makers  of  San  Marco:  was  that  quarrel  ever  made  up  ? 
And  our  Lorenzo  himself,  with  the  dim  outward  eyes  and  the 

1  "  God  does  not  pay  on  a  Saturday. " 


PROEM.  t 

subtle  inward  vision,  did  he  get  over  that  illness  at  Careggi? 
It  was  but  a  sad,  uneasy -looking  face  that  he  would  carry  out 
of  the  world  which  had  given  him  so  much,  and  there  were 
strong  suspicions  that  his  handsome  son  would  play  the  part 
of  Rehoboam.  How  has  it  all  turned  out?  Which  party  is 
likely  to  be  banished  and  have  its  houses  sacked  just  now  ?  Is 
there  any  successor  of  the  incomparable  Lorenzo,  to  whom  the 
great  Turk  is  so  gracious  as  to  send  over  presents  of  rare  ani- 
mals, rare  relics,  rare  manuscripts,  or  fugitive  enemies,  suited 
to  the  tastes  of  a  Christian  Magnifico  who  is  at  once  lettered 
and  devout  —  and  also  slightly  vindictive?  And  what  famous 
scholar  is  dictating  the  Latin  letters  of  the  Republic  —  what 
fiery  philosopher  is  lecturing  on  Dante  in  the  Duomo,  and 
going  home  to  write  bitter  invectives  against  the  father 
and  mother  of  the  bad  critic  who  may  have  found  fault 
with  his  classical  spelling  ?  Are  our  wiser  heads  leaning 
towards  alliance  with  the  Pope  and  the  Regno,^  or  are 
they  rather  inclining  their  ears  to  the  orators  of  France  and 
of  Milan  ? 

"There  is  knowledge  of  these  things  to  be  had  in  the 
streets  below,  on  the  beloved  marmi  in  front  of  the  churches, 
and  under  the  sheltering  Loggie,  where  surely  our  citizens 
have  still  their  gossip  and  debates,  their  bitter  and  merry 
jests  as  of  old.  For  are  not  the  well-remembered  buildings 
all  there  ?  The  changes  have  not  been  so  great  in  those 
uncounted  years.  I  will  go  down  and  hear  —  I  will  tread  the 
familiar  pavement,  and  hear  once  again  the  speech  of  Floren- 
tines." 

Go  not  down,  good  Spirit !  for  the  changes  are  great  and 
the  speech  of  Florentines  would  sound  as  a  riddle  in  your 
ears.  Or,  if  you  go,  mingle  with  no  politicians  on  the  marmi, 
or  elsewhere  ;  ask  no  questions  about  trade  in  the  Calimara ; 
confuse  yourself  with  no  inquiries  into  scholarship,  official  or 
monastic.  Only  look  at  the  sunlight  and  shadows  on  the 
grand  walls  that  were  built  solidly,  and  have  endured  in  their 
grandeur ;  look  at  the  faces  of  the  little  children,  making 
another  sunlight  amid  the  shadows  of  age  ;  look,  if  you  will, 
into  the  churches,  and  hear  the  same  chants,  see  the  same 
images  as  of  old  —  the  images  of  willing  anguish  for  a  great 
end,  of  beneficent  love  and  ascending  glory ;  see  upturned 
living  faces,  and  lips  moving  to  the  old  prayers  for  help. 
These  things  have  not  changed.  The  sunlight  and  shadows 
bring   their  old   beauty  and  waken    the   old   heart-strains    at 

1  The  name  given  to  Naples  by  way  of  distinction  among  tlie  Italian  States. 


S  ROMOLA. 

morning,  noon  and  eventide  ;  the  little  children  are  still  the 
symbol  of  the  eternal  marriage  between  love  and  duty  ;  and 
men  still  yearn  for  the  reign  of  peace  and  righteousness  — 
still  own  that  life  to  be  the  highest  which  is  a  conscious 
voluntary  sacrifice.  For  the  Pope  Angelico  is  not  come 
yet. 


BOOK    I. 

CHAPTER   I. 

THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER. 

The  Loggia  de'  Cerchi  stood  in  the  heart  of  old  Florence, 
within  a  labyrinth  of  narrow  streets  behind  the  Badia,  now 
rarely  threaded  by  the  stranger,  unless  in  a  dubious  search  for 
a  certain  severely  simple  door-place,  bearing  this  inscription  : 

QUI    NACQUE    IL    DIVINO    POETA. 

To  the  ear  of  Dante,  the  same  streets  rang  with  the  shout  and 
clash  of  fierce  battle  between  rival  families ;  but  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  they  were  only  noisy  with  the  unhistorical 
quarrels  and  broad  jests  of  wool-carders  in  the  cloth-producing 
quarters  of  San  Martino  and  Garbo. 

Under  this  loggia,  in  the  early  morning  of  the  9th  of  April, 
1492,  two  men  had  their  eyes  fixed  on  each  other :  one  was 
stooping  slightly,  and  looking  downward  with  the  scrutiny  of 
curiosity ;  the  other,  lying  on  the  pavement,  was  looking 
upward  with  the  startled  gaze  of  a  suddenly  awakened 
dreamer. 

The  standing  figure  was  the  first  to  speak.  He  was  a  gray- 
haired,  broad-shouldered  man,  of  the  type  which,  in  Tuscan 
phrase,  is  moulded  with  the  fist  and  polished  with  the  pickaxe ; 
but  the  self-important  gravity  which  had  written  itself  out  in 
the  deep  lines  about  his  brow  and  mouth  seemed  intended  to 
correct  any  contemptuous  inferences  from  the  hasty  workman- 
ship which  Nature  had  bestowed  on  his  exterior.  He  had 
deposited  a  large  well-filled  bag,  made  of  skins,  on  the  pave- 
ment, and  before  him  hung  a  pedler's  basket,  garnished  partly 
with  small  woman's-ware,  such  as  thread  and  pins,  and  partly 
with  fragments  of  glass,  which  had  probably  been  taken  in 
exchange  for  those  commodities. 

"  Young  man,"  he  said,  pointing  to  a  ring  on  the  finger  of 


10  ROMOLA. 

the  reclining  figure,  "  when  your  chin  has  got  a  stiffer  crop  on 
it,  you'll  know  better  than  to  take  your  nap  in  street  corners 
with  a  ring  like  that  on  your  forefinger.  By  the  Holy 
'vangels !  if  it  had  been  anybody  but  me  standing  over  you 
two  minutes  ago  —  but  Bratti  Ferravecchi  is  not  the  man 
to  steal.  The  cat  couldn't  eat  her  mouse  if  she  didn't  catch  it 
alive,  and  Bratti  couldn't  relish  gain  if  it  had  no  taste  of  a 
bargain.  Why,  young  man,  one  San  Giovanni,  three  years 
ago,  the  Saint  sent  a  dead  body  in  my  way — a  blind  beggar, 
with  his  cap  well-lined  with  pieces  —  but,  if  you'll  believe  me, 
my  stomach  turned  against  the  money  I'd  never  bargained  for, 
till  it  came  into  my  head  that  San  Giovanni  owed  me  the 
pieces  for  what  I  spend  yearly  at  the  Festa ;  besides,  I  buried 
the  body  and  paid  for  a  mass  —  and  so  I  saw  it  was  a  fair 
bargain.  But  how  comes  a  young  man  like  you,  with  the  face 
of  Messer  San  Michele,  to  be  sleeping  on  a  stone  bed  with  the 
wind  for  a  curtain  ?  " 

The  deep  guttural  sounds  of  the  speaker  were  scarcely 
intelligible  to  the  newly  waked,  bewildered  listener,  but  he 
understood  the  action  of  pointing  to  his  ring :  he  looked  down 
at  it,  and,  with  a  half-automatic  obedience  to  the  warning, 
took  it  off  and  thrust  it  within  his  doublet,  rising  at  the  same 
time  and  stretching  himself. 

"  Your  tunic  and  hose  match  ill  with  that  jewel,  young  man," 
said  Bratti,  deliberately.  "  Anybody  might  say  the  saints  had 
sent  you  a  dead  body ;  but  if  you  took  the  jewels,  I  hope  you 
buried  him  —  and  you  can  afford  a  mass  or  two  for  him  into 
the  bargain." 

Something  like  a  painful  thrill  appeared  to  dart  through  the 
frame  of  the  listener,  and  arrest  the  careless  stretching  of  his 
arms  and  chest.  For  an  instant  he  turned  on  Bratti  with  a 
sharp  frown  ;  but  he  immediately  recovered  an  air  of  indiffer- 
ence, took  off  the  red  Levantine  cap  which  hung  like  a  great 
purse  over  his  left  ear,  pushed  back  his  long  dark-brown  curls, 
and  glancing  at  his  dress,  said,  smilingly  — 

"  You  speak  truth,  friend :  my  garments  are  as  weather- 
stained  as  an  old  sail,  and  they  are  not  old  either,  only,  like  an 
old  sail,  they  have  had  a  sprinkling  of  the  sea  as  well  as  the 
rain.  The  fact  is,  I'm  a  stranger  in  Florence,  and  when  I 
came  in  footsore  last  night  I  preferred  flinging  myself  in  a 
corner  of  this  hospitable  porch  to  hunting  any  longer  for  a 
chance  hostelry,  which  might  turn  out  to  be  a  nest  of  blood- 
suckers of  more  sorts  than  one." 

"  A  stranger,  in  good  sooth,"  said  Bratti,  "  for  the  words 


r 


THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER.  11 

come  all  melting  out  of  your  throat,  so  that  a  Christian  and  a 
Florentine  can't  tell  a  hook  from  a  hanger.  But  you're  not 
from  Genoa  ?  More  likely  from  Venice,  by  the  cut  of  your 
clothes  ?  " 

"  At  this  present  moment,"  said  the  stranger,  smiling,  "  it  is 
of  less  importance  where  I  come  from  than  where  I  can  go  to 
for  a  mouthful  of  breakfast.  This  city  of  yours  turns  a  grim 
look  on  me  just  here :  can  you  show  me  the  way  to  a  more 
lively  quarter,  where  I  can  get  a  meal  and  a  lodging  ?  " 

"That  I  can,"  said  Bratti,  "and  it  is  your  good  fortune, 
young  man,  that  I  have  happened  to  be  walking  in  from 
Kovezzano  this  morning,  and  turned  out  of  my  way  to  Mercato 
Vecchio  to  say  an  Ave  at  the  Badia.  That,  I  say,  is  your  good 
fortune.  But  it  remains  to  be  seen  what  is  my  profit  in  the 
matter.  Nothing  for  nothing,  young  man.  If  I  show  you 
the  way  to  Mercato  Vecchio,  you'll  swear  by  your  patron 
saint  to  let  me  have  the  bidding  for  that  stained  suit  of  yours, 
when  you  set  up  a  better  —  as  doubtless  you  will." 

"  Agreed,  by  San  Niccolo,"  said  the  other,  laughing.  "  But 
now  let  us  set  off  to  this  said  Mercato,  for  I  feel  the  want  of  a 
better  lining  to  this  doublet  of  mine  which  you  are  coveting." 

"  Coveting  ?  Nay,"  said  Bratti,  heaving  his  bag  on  his  back 
and  setting  out.  But  he  broke  off  in  his  reply,  and  burst  out 
in  loud,  harsh  tones,  not  unlike  the  creaking  and  grating  of  a 
cart-wheel :  "  Chi  ahbaratta  —  baratta  —  Vratta  —  chi  abbaratta, 
cenci  e  vetri  —  Vratta  ferri  vecchi .'"'  ^ 

"  It's  worth  but  little,"  he  said  presently,  relapsing  into  his 
conversational  tone.  "  Hose  and  altogether,  your  clothes  are 
worth  but  little.  Still,  if  you've  a  mind  to  set  yourself  up 
with  a  lute  worth  more  than  any  new  one,  or  with  a  sword 
that's  been  worn  by  a  Ridolfi,  or  with  a  paternoster  of  the 
best  mode,  I  could  let  you  have  a  great  bargain,  by  making  an 
allowance  for  the  clothes  ;  for,  simple  as  I  stand  here,  I've 
got  the  best-furnished  shop  in  the  Ferravecchi,  and  it's  close 
by  the  Mercato.  The  Virgin  be  praised  !  it's  not  a  pumpkin  I 
carry  on  my  shoulders.  But  I  don't  stay  caged  in  my  shop 
all  day :  I've  got  a  w^ife  and  a  raven  to  stay  at  home  and  mind 
the  stock.  Clii  abbaratta — baratta  —  Uratta?  .  .  .  And  now, 
young  man,  where  do  you  come  from,  and  what's  your 
business  in  Florence  ?  " 

"  I  thought  you  liked  nothing  that  came  to  you  without  a 
bargain,"  said  the  stranger.  "  You've  offered  me  nothing  yet 
in  exchange  for  that  information." 

'  "  Who  wants  to  ixcliange  rags,  broken  gla.ss,  or  olii  iron  ?  " 


12  ROMOLA. 

"Well,  well;  a  Florentine  doesn't  mind  bidding  a  fair  price 
for  news :  it  stays  the  stomach  a  little  though  he  may  win  no 
hose  by  it.  If  I  take  you  to  the  prettiest  damsel  in  the 
Mercato  to  get  a  cup  of  milk  ■ —  that  will  be  a  fair  bargain." 

"  Nay ;  I  can  find  her  myself,  if  she  be  really  in  the 
Mercato ;  for  pretty  heads  are  apt  to  look  forth  of  doors  and 
windows.  No,  no.  Besides,  a  sharp  trader,  like  you,  ought 
to  know  that  he  who  bids  for  nuts  and  news,  may  chance  to 
find  them  hollow." 

"  Ah !  young  man,"  said  Bratti,  with  a  sideway  glance  of 
some  admiration,  "  you  were  not  born  of  a  Sunday  —  the  salt- 
shops  were  open  when  you  came  into  the  world.  You're  not 
a  Hebrew,  eh  ?  —  come  from  Spain  or  Naples,  eh  ?  Let  me 
tell  you  the  Frati  Minori  are  trying  to  make  Florence  as  hot 
as  Spain  for  those  dogs  of  hell  that  want  to  get  all  the  profit 
of  usury  to  themselves  and  leave  none  for  Christians ;  and 
when  you  walk  the  Calimara  with  a  piece  of  yellow  cloth  in 
your  cap,  it  will  spoil  your  beauty  more  than  a  sword-cut 
across  that  smooth  olive  cheek  of  yours.  —  Abbaratta,  baratta 

—  chi  abbaratta?  —  I  tell  you,  young  man,  gray  cloth  is  against 
yellow  cloth ;  and  there's  as  much  gray  cloth  in  Florence  as 
would  make  a  gown  and  cowl  for  the  Duomo,  and  there's  not 
so  much  yellow  cloth  as  would  make  hose  for  Saint  Christopher 

—  blessed  be  his  name,  and  send  me  a  sight  of  him  this  day  ! 

—  Abbaratta,  baratta,  Vratta  —  chi  abbaratta  ?  " 

"  All  that  is  very  amusing  information  you  are  parting  with 
for  nothing,"  said  the  stranger,  rather  scornfully  ;  ''  but  it 
happens  not  to  concern  me.     I  am  no  Hebrew." 

"  See,  now  !  "  said  Bratti,  triumphantly  ;  "I've  made  a  good 
bargain  with  mere  words.  I've  made  you  tell  me  something, 
young  man,  though  you're  as  hard  to  hold  as  a  lamprey.  San 
Giovanni  be  praised !  a  blind  Florentine  is  a  match  for  two 
one-e^^ed  men.     But  here  we  are  in  the  Mercato." 

They  had  now  emerged  from  the  narrow  streets  into  a 
broad  piazza,  known  to  the  elder  Florentine  writers  as  the 
Mercato  Vecchio,  or  the  Old  Market.  This  piazza,  though  it 
had  been  the  scene  of  a  provision-market  from  time  imme- 
morial, and  may,  perhaps,  says  fond  imagination,  be  the  very 
epot  to  which  the  Fesulean  ancestors  of  the  Florentines  de- 
scended from  their  high  fastness  to  traffic  with  the  rustic 
population  of  the  valley,  liad  not  been  shunned  as  a  place  of 
residence  by  Florentine  wealth.  In  the  early  decades  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  which  was  now  near  its  end,  the  Medici  and 
other  powerful  families  of  the  popolani  grassl,  or  commercial 


THE   SHIPWRECKED   STRANGER.  13 

nobility,  had  their  houses  there,  not  perhaps  finding  their  ears 
much  offended  by  the  loud  roar  of  mingled  dialects,  or  their 
eyes  much  shocked  by  the  butchers'  stalls,  which  the  old  poet 
Antonio  Pucci  accounts  a  chief  glory,  or  dignita,  of  a  market 
that,  in  his  esteem,  eclipsed  the  markets  of  all  the  earth 
beside.  But  the  glory  of  mutton  and  veal  (well  attested  to  be 
the  flesh  of  the  right  animals ;  for  were  not  the  skins,  with 
the  heads  attached,  duly  displayed,  according  to  the  decree 
of  the  Signoria?)  was  just  now  wanting  to  the  Mercato,  the 
time  of  Lent  not  being  yet  over.  The  proud  corporation,  or 
"Art,"  of  butchers  was  in  abeyance,  and  it  was  the  great  har- 
vest-time of  the  market-gardeners,  the  cheesemongers,  the  vend- 
ers of  macaroni,  corn,  eggs,  milk,  and  dried  fruits  :  a  change 
which  was  apt  to  make  the  women's  voices  predominant  in  th* 
chorus.  But  in  all  seasons  there  was  the  experimental  ring- 
ing of  pots  and  pans,  the  chinking  of  the  money-changers,  the 
tempting  offers  of  cheapness  at  the  old-clothes  stalls,  the  chal- 
lenges of  the  dicers,  the  vaunting  of  new  linens  and  woollens, 
of  excellent  wooden- ware,  kettles,  and  frying-pans ;  there  was 
the  choking  of  the  narrow  inlets  with  mules  and  carts,  together 
with  much  uncomplimentary  remonstrance  in  terms  re- 
markably identical  with  the  insults  in  use  by  the  gentler  sex 
of  the  present  day,  under  the  same  imbrowning  and  heating 
circumstances.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  who  came  to  market, 
looked  on  at  a  larger  amount  of  amateur  fighting  than  could 
easil}-  be  seen  in  these  later  times,  and  beheld  more  revolting 
rags,  beggary,  and  rascaldom,  than  modern  householders  could 
well  picture  to  themselves.  As  the  day  wore  on,  the  hideous 
drama  of  the  gaming-house  might  be  seen  here  b}'  any  chance 
open-air  spectator  —  the  quivering  eagerness,  the  blank 
despair,  the  sobs,  the  blasphemy,  and  the  blows  : — 

"  E  vedesi  chi  perde  con  gran  soffi, 
E  bestemraiar  colla  mano  alia  niascella, 
E  ricever  e  dar  di  molti  ingofR." 

But  still  there  was  the  relief  of  prettier  sights :  there  were 
brood-rabbits,  not  less  innocent  and  astonished  than  those  of 
our  own  period ;  there  were  doves  and  singing-birds  to  be 
bought  as  presents  for  the  children  ;  there  were  even  kittens 
for  sale,  and  here  and  there  a  handsome  gattuccio,  or  "  Tom,  " 
with  the  highest  character  for  mousing ;  and,  better  than  all, 
there  were  young  softly  rounded  cheeks  and  bright  eyes,  fresh- 
ened by  the  start  from  the  far-off  castello  ^  at  daybreak,  not  to 

'  Walled  village. 


14  ROMOLA. 

speak  of  older  faces  with  the  unfading  charm  of  honest  good- 
will in  them,  such  as  are  never  quite  wanting  in  scenes  of 
human  industry.  And  high  on  a  pillar  in  the  centre  of  the 
place  —  a  venerable  pillar,  fetched  from  the  Church  of  San 
Giovanni  —  stood  Donatello's  stone  statue  of  Plenty,  with  a 
fountain  near  it,  where,  says  old  Pucci,  the  good  wives  of  the 
market  freshened  their  utensils,  and  their  throats  also;  not 
because  they  were  unable  to  buy  wine,  but  because  they 
wished  to  save  the  money  for  their  husbands. 

But  on  this  particular  morning  a  sudden  change  seemed  to 
have  come  over  the  face  of  the  market.  The  deschi,  or  stalls, 
were  indeed  partly  dressed  with  their  various  commodities, 
and  already  there  were  purchasers  assembled,  on  the  alert  to 
secure  the  finest,  freshest  vegetables  and  the  most  unex- 
ceptionable butter.  But  when  Bratti  and  his  companion 
entered  the  piazza,  it  appeared  that  some  common  preoccupa- 
tion had  for  the  moment  distracted  the  attention  both  of 
buyers  and  sellers  from  their  proper  business.  Most  of  the 
traders  had  turned  their  backs  on  their  goods,  and  had  joined 
the  knots  of  talkers  who  were  concentrating  themselves  at 
different  points  in  the  piazza.  A  vender  of  old  clothes,  in  the 
act  of  hanging  out  a  pair  of  long  hose,  had  distractedl}^  hung 
them  round  his  neck  in  his  eagerness  to  join  the  nearest 
group ;  an  oratorical  cheesemonger,  with  a  piece  of  cheese  in 
one  hand  and  a  knife  in  the  other,  was  incautiously  making 
notes  of  his  emphatic  pauses  on  that  excellent  specimen  of 
viarzolino  ;  and  elderly  market-women,  with  their  egg-baskets 
in  a  dangerously  oblique  position,  contributed  a  wailing  fugue 
of  invocation. 

In  this  general  distraction,  the  Florentine  boys,  who  were 
never  wanting  in  any  street  scene,  and  were  of  an  especially 
mischievous  sort  —  as  who  should  say,  very  sour  crabs  in- 
deed—  saw  a  great  opportunity.  Some  made  a  rush  at  the 
nuts  and  dried  figs,  others  preferred  the  farinaceous  delicacies 
at  the  cooked  provision  stalls  —  delicacies  to  which  certain 
four-footed  dogs  also,  who  had  learned  to  take  kindly  to 
Lenten  fare,  applied  a  discriminating  nostril,  and  then  disap- 
peared with  much  rapidity  under  the  nearest  shelter ;  while 
the  mules,  not  without  some  kicking  and  plunging  among  im- 
peding baskets,  were  stretching  their  muzzles  towards  the 
aromatic  green-meat. 

"  Diavolo  !  "  said  Bratti,  as  he  and  his  companion  came,  quite 
unnoticed,  upon  the  noisy  scene  ;  "the  Mercato  is  gone  as  mad 
as  if  the  most  Holy  Father  had  excommunicated  us  again.     I 


THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER.  15 

must  know  what  this  is.  But  never  fear :  it  seems  a  thou- 
sand years  to  you  till  you  see  the  pretty  Tessa,  and  get  your 
cup  of  milk  ;  but  keep  hold  of  me,  and  I'll  hold  to  my  bar- 
gain. Remember,  I'm  to  have  the  first  bid  for  your  suit ; 
specially  for  the  hose,  which,  with  all  their  stains,  are  the  best 
'panno  di  garho —  as  good  as  ruined,  though,  with  mud  and 
weather  stains." 

"  Ola,  Monna  Trecca,"  Bratti  proceeded,  turning  towards  an 
old  woman  on  the  outside  of  the  nearest  group,  who  for  the 
moment  had  suspended  her  wail  to  listen,  and  shouting  close 
in  her  ear:  "Here  are  the  mules  upsetting  all  your  bunches 
of  parsley  :  is  the  world  coming  to  an  end,  then  ?  " 

"Monna  Trecca"  (equivalent  to  "Dame  Greengrocer") 
turned  round  at  this  unexpected  trumpeting  in  her  right  ear, 
with  a  half-fierce,  half-bewildered  look,  first  at  the  speaker, 
then  at  her  disarranged  commodities,  and  then  at  the  speaker 
again. 

"  A  bad  Easter  and  a  bad  year  to  you,  and  may  you  die  by 
the  sword ! "  she  burst  out,  rushing  towards  her  stall,  but 
directing  this  first  volley  of  her  wrath  against  Bratti,  who, 
without  heeding  the  malediction,  quietly  slipped  into  her 
place,  within  hearing  of  the  narrative  which  had  been  absorb- 
ing her  attention ;  making  a  sign  at  the  same  time  to  the 
younger  stranger  to  keep  near  him. 

"  I  tell  you  I  saw  it  myself,"  said  a  fat  man  with  a  bunch  of 
newly  purchased  leeks  in  his  hand.  "  I  was  in  Santa  Maria 
Novella,  and  saw  it  myself.  The  woman  started  up  and  threw 
out  her  arms,  and  cried  out  and  said  she  saw  a  big  bull  with 
fiery  horns  coming  down  on  the  church  to  crush  it.  I  saw 
it  myself." 

"  Saw  what,  Goro  ?  "  said  a  man  of  slim  figure,  whose  eye 
twinkled  rather  roguishly.  He  wore  a  close  jerkin,  a  skull-cap 
lodged  carelessly  over  his  left  ear  as  if  it  had  fallen  there  by 
chance,  a  delicate  linen  apron  tucked  up  on  one  side,  and  a 
razor  stuck  in  his  belt.     "  Saw  the  bull  or  only  the  woman  ?  " 

"Why,  the  woman,  to  be  sure;  but  it's  all  one,  mi  pare ;  it 
doesn't  alter  the  meaning  —  va  !  "  answered  the  fat  man,  with 
some  contempt. 

"  Meaning  ?  no,  no ;  that's  clear  enovigh,"  said  several  voices 
at  once,  and  then  followed  a  confusion  of  tongues,  in  which 
"  Lights  shooting  over  San  Lorenzo  for  three  nights  together  " 
—  "  Thunder  in  the  clear  starlight  " —  "  Lantern  of  the  Duomo 
struck  with   the    sword   of   St.  Michael"  — "PaZZe"  ^  — "All 

>  Arms  of  the  lledici. 


16  ROMOLA. 

smashed  " —  "  Lions  tearing  each  other  to  pieces  " —  "  Ah  !  and 
^hey  might  well  "  —  "  Boto  ^  caduto  in  Santissima  Nunziata  !  " 
—  *'  Died  like  the  best  of  Christians  "  —  "  God  will  have  par- 
doned him  "  —  were  often-repeated  phrases,  which  shot  across 
each  other  like  storm-driven  hailstones,  each  speaker  feeling 
rather  the  necessity  of  utterance  than  of  finding  a  listener. 
Perhaps  the  only  silent  members  of  the  group  were  Bratti, 
who,  as  a  new-comer,  was  busy  in  mentally  piecing  together 
the  flying  fragments  of  information ;  the  man  of  the  razor ;  and 
a  thin-lipped,  eager-looking  personage  in  spectacles,  wearing  a 
pen-and-ink  case  at  his  belt. 

"  Ebbene,  Nello,"  said  Bratti,  skirting  the  group  till  he  was 
within  hearing  of  the  barber,  "It appears  the  Magnifico  is 
dead —  rest  his  soul !  — and  the  price  of  wax  will  rise  ?  " 

"  Even  as  you  say,"  answered  ISTello ;  and  then  added,  with 
an  air  of  extra  gravity,  but  with  marvellous  rapidity,  "and  his 
waxen  image  in  the  Nunziata  fell  at  the  same  moment,  they 
say ;  or  at  some  other  time,  whenever  it  pleases  the  Frati 
Serviti,  who  know  best.  And  several  cows  and  women  have 
had  still-born  calves  this  Quaresima ;  and  for  the  bad  eggs 
that  have  been  broken  since  the  Carnival,  nobody  has  counted 
them.  Ah !  a  great  man  —  a  great  politician  —  a  greater  poet 
than  Dante.  And  yet  the  cupola  didn't  fall,  only  the  lantern. 
Che  miracolo  !  " 

A  sharp  and  lengthened  "  Pst ! "  was  suddenly  heard  dart- 
ing across  the  pelting  storm  of  gutturals.  It  came  from  the 
pale  man  in  spectacles,  and  had  the  effect  he  intended ;  for 
the  noise  ceased,  and  all  eyes  in  the  group  were  fixed  on  him 
with  a  look  of  expectation. 

"  'Tis  well  said  you  Florentines  are  blind,"  he  began,  in  an 
incisive  high  voice.  "  It  appears  to  me,  you  need  nothing  but 
a  diet  of  hay  to  make  cattle  of  you.  What !  do  you  think 
the  death  of  Lorenzo  is  the  scourge  God  has  prepared  for 
Florence  ?  Go  !  you  are  sparrows  chattering  praise  over  the 
dead  hawk.  What !  a  man  who  was  trying  to  slip  a  noose 
over  every  neck  in  the  Republic  that  he  might  tighten  it  at 
his  pleasure  !  You  like  that ;  you  like  to  have  the  election  of 
your  magistrates  turned  into  closet-work,  and  no  man  to  use 
the  rights  of  a  citizen  unless  he  is  a  Medicean.  That  is  what 
is  meant  by  qualification  now :  netto  di  specchio  ^  no  longer 
means  that  a  man  pays  his  dues  to  the  Republic :  it  means  that 

'  A  votive  image  of  Lorenzo,  in  wax,  hungup  in  the  Church  of  the  Annunziata,  sup- 
posed to  have  fallen  at  the  time  of  his  death.    Boto  is  popular  Tuscan  for  Voto. 

2  The  phrase  used  to  express  the  absence  of  disqualilication  —  i.e.,  the  not  being 
entered  as  a  debtor  in  the  public  book  [apecchio) . 


THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER.  17 

he'll  wink  at  robbery  of  the  people's  money  —  at  robbery  of 
their  daughters'  dowries ;  that  he'll  play  the  chamberer  and 
the  philosopher  by  turns  —  listen  to  bawdy  songs  at  the 
Carnival  and  cry  '  Bellissimi ! '  — and  listen  to  sacred  lauds  and 
cry  again  •  Bellissimi ! '  But  this  is  what  you  love :  you 
grumble  and  raise  a  riot  over  your  quattrlni  hlanchi"  (white 
farthings) ;  *'  but  you  take  no  notice  when  the  public  treasury 
has  got  a  hole  in  the  bottom  for  the  gold  to  i"un  into  Lorenzo's 
drains.  You  like  to  pay  for  footmen  to  walk  before  and 
behind  one  of  your  citizens,  that  he  may  be  affable  and  conde- 
scending to  you.  '  See,  what  a  tall  Pisan  we  keep,'  say  you, 
'to  march  before  him  with  the  drawn  sword  flashing  in  our 
eyes  !  —  and  yet  Lorenzo  smiles  at  us.  What  goodness  ! '  And 
you  think  the  death  of  a  man,  who  would  soon  have  saddled 
and  bridled  you  as  the  Sforza  has  saddled  and  bridled  Milan  — 
you  think  his  death  is  the  scourge  God  is  warning  you  of  by 
portents.  I  tell  you  there  is  another  sort  of  scourge  in  the 
air." 

"  Nay,  nay,  Ser  Cioni,  keep  astride  your  politics,  and  never 
mount  your  prophecy ;  politics  is  the  better  horse,"  said  ISTello. 
"But  if  you  talk  of  portents,  what  portent  can  be  greater 
than  a  pious  notary  ?     Balaam's  ass  was  nothing  to  it." 

"  Ay,  but  a  notary  out  of  work,  with  his  inkbottle  dry," 
said  another  bystander,  very  much  out  at  elbows.  "  Better 
don  a  cowl  at  once,  Ser  Cioni ;  everybody  will  believe  in  your 
fasting." 

The  notary  turned  and  left  the  group  with  a  look  of  indig- 
nant contempt,  disclosing,  as  he  did  so,  the  sallow  but  mild 
face  of  a  short  man  who  had  been  standing  behind  him,  and 
whose  bent  shoulders  told  of  some  sedentary  occupation. 

"  By  San  Giovanni,  though,"  said  the  fat  purchaser  of  leeks, 
with  the  air  of  a  person  ratlier  shaken  in  his  theories,  "  I  am 
not  sure  there  isn't  some  truth  in  what  Ser  Cioni  says.  For  I 
know  I  have  good  reason  to  find  fault  with  the  quattrini  bianchi 
myself.  Grumble,  did  he  say  ?  Suffocation  !  I  should  think 
we  do  grumble ;  and,  let  anybody  say  the  word,  I'll  turn  out 
into  the  piazza  with  the  readiest,  sooner  than  have  our  money 
altered  in  our  hands  as  if  the  magistracy  were  so  many 
necromancers.  And  it's  true  Lorenzo  might  have  hindered 
such  work  if  he  would  —  and  for  the  bull  with  the  flaming 
horns,  why,  as  Ser  Cioni  says,  there  may  be  many  meanings  to 
it,  for  the  matter  of  that ;  it  may  have  more  to  do  with  the 
taxes  than  we  think.  For  when  God  above  sends  a  sign,  it's 
not  to  be  supposed  he'd  have  only  one  meaning." 


18  ROMOLA. 

''  Spoken  like  an  oracle,  Goro  !  "  said  the  barber.  "  Why, 
when  we  poor  mortals  can  pack  two  or  three  meanings  into 
one  sentence,  it  were  mere  blasphemy  not  to  believe  that  your 
miraculous  bull  means  everything  that  any  man  in  Florence 
likes  it  to  mean." 

''  Thou  art  pleased  to  scoff,  Nello,"  said  the  sallow,  round- 
shouldered  man,  no  longer  eclipsed  by  the  notary,  "  but  it  is 
not  the  less  true  that  every  revelation,  whether  by  visions, 
dreams,  portents,  or  the  written  word,  has  many  meanings, 
which  it  is  given  to  the  illuminated  only  to  unfold." 

"Assuredly,"  answered  Nello.  "Haven't  I  been  to  hear 
the  Frate  in  San  Lorenzo  ?  But  then,  I've  been  to  hear 
Fra  Menico  in  the  Duomo  too ;  and  according  to  him,  your 
Fra  Girolamo,  with  his  visions  and  interpretations,  is  running 
after  the  wind  of  Mongibello,  and  those  who  follow  him  are 
like  to  have  the  fate  of  certain  swine  that  ran  headlong  into 
the  sea  —  or  some  hotter  place.  With  San  Domenico  roaring 
e  vero  in  one  ear,  and  San  Francisco  screaming  e  /also  in  the 
other,  what  is  a  poor  barber  to  do  —  unless  he  were  illumi- 
nated ?  But  it's  plain  our  Goro  here  is  beginning  to  be 
illuminated,  for  he  already  sees  that  the  bull  with  the  flaming 
horns  means  first  himself,  and  secondly  all  the  other  aggrieved 
taxpayers  of  Florence,  who  are  determined  to  gore  the 
magistracy  on  the  first  opportunity." 

"  Goro  is  a  fool !  "  said  a  bass  voice,  with  a  note  that  dropped 
like  the  sound  of  a  great  bell  in  the  midst  of  much  tinkling. 
"  Let  him  carry  home  his  leeks  and  shake  his  flanks  over  his 
wool-beating.  He'll  mend  matters  more  that  way  than  by 
showing  his  tun-shaped  body  in  the  piazza,  as  if  everybody 
might  measure  his  grievances  by  the  size  of  his  paunch.  The 
burdens  that  harm  him  most  are  his  heavy  carcass  and  his 
idleness." 

The  speaker  had  joined  the  group  only  in  time  to  hear  the 
conclusion  of  Nello's  speech,  but  he  was  one  of  those  figures 
for  whom  all  the  world  instinctively  makes  way,  as  it  Avould 
for  a  battering-ram.  He  was  not  much  above  the  middle 
height,  but  the  impression  of  enormous  force  which  was  con- 
veyed by  his  capacious  chest  and  brawny  arms  bared  to  the 
shoulder,  was  deepened  by  the  keen  sense  and  quiet  resolution 
expressed  in  his  glance  and  in  every  furrow  of  his  cheek  and 
brow.  He  had  often  been  an  unconscious  model  to  Domenico 
Ghirlandajo,  when  that  great  painter  was  making  the  walls  of 
the  churclies  reflect  the  life  of  Florence,  and  translating  pale 
aerial  traditions  into  the  deep  color  and  strong  lines  of  the 


THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER.  19 

faces  he  knew.  The  naturally  dark  tint  of  his  skin  was 
additionally  bronzed  by  the  same  powdery  deposit  that  gave  a 
polished  black  surface  to  his  leathern  apron  :  a  deposit  which 
habit  had  probably  made  a  necessary  condition  of  perfect  ease, 
for  it  was  not  washed  off  with  punctilious  regularity. 

Goro  turned  his  fat  cheek  and  glassy  eye  on  the  frank 
speaker  with  a  look  of  deprecation  rather  than  of  resent- 
ment. 

"  Why,  Niccolo,"  he  said  in  an  injured  tone,  "  I've  heard  you 
sing  to  another  tune  than  that,  often  enough,  when  you've 
been  laying  down  the  law  at  San  Gallo  on  a  festa.  I've  heard 
you  say  yourself,  that  a  man  wasn't  a  mill-wheel,  to  be  on  the 
grind,  grind,  as  long  as  he  was  driven,  and  then  stick  in  his 
place  without  stirring  when  the  water  was  low.  And  you're 
as  fond  of  your  vote  as  any  man  in  Florence  —  ay,  and  I've 
heard  you  say,  if  Lorenzo"  — 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Niccolo.  ''  Don't  you  be  bringing  up  my 
speeches  again  after  you've  swallowed  them,  and  handing 
them  about  as  if  they  were  none  the  worse.  I  vote  and  I 
speak  when  there's  any  use  in  it :  if  there's  hot  metal  on  the 
anvil,  I  lose  no  time  before  I  strike ;  but  I  don't  spend  good 
hours  in  tinkling  on  cold  iron,  or  in  standing  on  the  pavement 
as  thou  dost,  Goro,  with  snout  upward,  like  a  pig  under  an 
oak-tree.  And  as  for  Lorenzo  —  dead  and  gone  before  his 
time  — he  was  a  man  who  had  an  eye  for  curious  iron-work  ; 
and  if  anybody  says  he  wanted  to  make  himself  a  tyrant,  I 
say,  'Sia;  I'll  not  deny  which  way  the  wind  blows  when 
every  man  can  see  the  weathercock.'  But  that  only  means 
that  Lorenzo  was  a  crested  hawk,  and  there  are  plenty  of 
hawks  without  crests  whose  claws  and  beaks  are  as  good  for 
tearing.  Though  if  there  was  any  chance  of  a  real  reform,  so 
that  Marzocco  -^  might  shake  his  mane  and  roar  again,  instead 
of  dipping  his  head  to  lick  the  feet  of  anybody  that  will  mount 
and  ride  him,  I'd  strike  a  good  blow  for  it." 

"  And  that  reform  is  not  far  off,  Niccol6,"  said  the  sallow, 
mild-faced  man,  seizing  his  opportunity  like  a  missionary 
among  the  too  light-minded  heathens ;  "  for  a  time  of  tribu- 
lation is  coming,  and  the  scourge  is  at  hand.  And  when  the 
Church  is  purged  of  cardinals  and  prelates  who  traffic  in  her 
inheritance  that  their  hands  may  be  full  to  pay  the  price  of 
blood  and  to  satisfy  their  OAvn  lusts,  the  State  will  be  purged 
too  —  and  Florence  will  be  purged  of  men  who  love  to  see 
avarice  and  lechery  under  the  red  hat  and  the  mitre  because  it 

1  The  stone  Lion,  emblem  of  the  Kepublic. 


20  ROMOLA. 

gives  them  the  screen  of  a  more  hellish  vice  than  their 
own." 

"  Ay,  as  Goro's  broad  body  would  be  a  screen  for  my  narrow 
person  in  case  of  missiles/'  said  Nello;  "but  if  that  excellent 
screen  happened  to  fall,  I  were  stifled  under  it,  surely  enough. 
That  is  no  bad  image  of  thine,  Nanni  —  or,  rather,  of  the 
Frate's ;  for  I  fancy  there  is  no  room  in  the  small  cup  of  thy 
understanding  for  any  other  liquor  than  what  he  pours  into 
it." 

"  And  it  were  well  for  thee,  Nello,"  replied  Nanni,  "  if  thou 
couldst  empty  thyself  of  thy  scoffs  and  thy  jests,  and  take 
in  that  liquor  too.  The  warning  is  ringing  in  the  ears  of 
all  men :  and  it's  no  new  story ;  for  the  Abbot  Joachim 
prophesied  of  the  coming  time  three  hundred  years  ago,  and 
now  Fra  Girolamo  has  got  the  message  afresh.  He  has  seen 
it  in  a  vision,  even  as  the  prophets  of  old :  he  has  seen  the 
sword  hanging  from  the  sky." 

''  Ay,  and  thou  wilt  see  it  thyself,  Nanni,  if  thou  wilt  stare 
upward  long  enough,"  said  Niccolo  ;  "  for  that  pitiable  tailor's 
work  of  thine  makes  thy  noddle  so  overhang  thy  legs,  that  th}^ 
eyeballs  can  see  naught  above  the  stitching-board  but  the  roof 
of  thy  own  skull." 

The  honest  tailor  bore  the  jest  without  bitterness,  bent  on 
convincing  his  hearers  of  his  doctrine  rather  than  of  his  dig- 
nity. But  Niccolo  gave  him  no  opportunity  for  replying ;  for 
he  turned  away  to  the  pursuit  of  his  market  business,  probably 
considering  further  dialogue  as  a  tinkling  on  cold  iron. 

"  Ebbenej"  said  the  man  with  the  hose  round  his  neck,  who 
had  lately  migrated  from  another  knot  of  talkers,  "  they  are 
safest  who  cross  themselves  and  jest  at  nobody.  Do  you  know 
that  the  Magnihco  sent  for  the  Frate  at  the  last,  and  couldn't 
die  without  his  blessing  ?  " 

"Was  it  so  —  in  truth  ?  "  said  several  voices.  "Yes,  yes  — 
God  will  have  pardoned  him."  "  He  died  like  the  best  of 
Christians."     "  Never  took  his  eyes  from  the  holy  crucifix." 

*' And  the  Frate  will  have  given  him  his  blessing  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  know  no  more,"  said  he  of  the  hosen  ;  "  only  Guc- 
cio  there  met  a  footman  going  back  to  Careggi,  and  he  told 
him  the  Frate  had  been  sent  for  yesternight,  after  the  Magni- 
fico  had  confessed  and  had  the  holy  sacraments." 

"  It's  likely  enough  the  Frate  will  tell  the  people  something 
about  it  in  his  sermon  this  morning;  is  it  not  true,  Nanni  ?  " 
said  Goro.     "What  do  you  think  ?  " 

But  Nanni   had  already  turned  his  back  on  Goro,  and  the 


THE  SHIPWRECKED  STRANGER.  21 

group  was  rapidly  thinning ;  some  being  stirred  by  the  im- 
pulse to  go  and  hear  "  new  things  "  from  the  Frate  ("new 
things  "  were  the  nectar  of  Florentines)  ;  others  by  the  sense 
that  it  was  time  to  attend  to  their  private  business.  In  this 
general  movement,  Bratti  got  close  to  the  barber  and 
said,  — 

"Nello,  you've  a  ready  tongue  of  your  own,  and  are  used  to 
worming  secrets  out  of  people  when  you've  once  got  them  well 
lathered.  I  picked  up  a  stranger  this  morning  as  I  was  com- 
ing in  from  Rovezzano,  and  I  can  spell  him  out  no  better  than  I 
can  the  letters  on  that  scarf  I  bought  from  the  French  cava- 
lier. It  isn't  my  Avits  are  at  fault,  —  I  want  no  man  to  help 
me  tell  peas  from  paternosters,  —  but  when  you  come  to 
foreign  fashions,  a  fool  may  happen  to  know  more  than  a  wise 
man." 

"Ay,  thou  hast  the  wisdom  of  Midas,  who  could  turn  rags 
and  rusty  nails  into  gold,  even  as  thou  dost,"  said  Nello,  "  and 
he  had  also  something  of  the  ass  about  him.     But  where  is  thy 
bird  of  strange  plumage  ?  " 
-  Bratti  was  looking  round,  with  an  air  of  disappointment. 

"  Diavolo ! "  he  said,  with  some  vexation.  "  The  bird's 
flown.  It's  true  he  was  hungry,  and  I  forgot  him.  But  we 
shall  find  him  in  the  Mercato,  within  scent  of  bread  and  sav- 
ors, I'll  answer  for  him." 

"  Let  us  make  the  round  of  the  Mercato,  then,"  said 
Nello. 

"  It  isn't  his  feathers  that  puzzle  me,"  continued  Bratti,  as 
they  pushed  their  way  together.  "  There  isn't  much  in  the 
way  of  cut  and  cloth  on  this  side  the  Holy  Sepulchre  that  can 
puzzle  a  Florentine." 

"  Or  frighten  him  either,"  said  Nello,  '•'  after  he  has  seen  an 
Englander  or  a  German." 

"  No,  no,"  said  Bratti,  cordially  ;  "  one  may  never  lose  sight 
of  the  Cupola  and  yet  know  the  world,  I  hope.  Besides,  this 
stranger's  clothes  are  good  Italian  merchandise,  and  the  hose 
he  wears  were  dyed  in  Ognissanti  before  ever  they  were  dyed 
with  salt  water,  as  he  says.     But  the  riddle  about  him  is  "  — 

Here  Bratti's  explanation  was  interrupted  by  some  jostling 
as  they  reached  one  of  the  entrances  of  the  piazza,  and  before 
he  could  resume  it  they  had  caught  sight  of  the  enigmatical 
object  they  were  in  search  of. 


22  ROM  OLA. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BREAKFAST    FOR    LOVE. 

After  Bratti  had  joined  the  knot  of  talkers,  the  young 
stranger,  hopeless  of  learning  what  was  the  cause  of  the  gen- 
eral agitation,  and  not  much  caring  to  know  what  was  proba- 
bly of  little  interest  to  any  but  born  Florentines,  soon  became 
tired  of  waiting  for  Bratti's  escort ;  and  chose  to  stroll  round 
the  piazza,  looking  out  for  some  vender  of  eatables  who 
might  happen  to  have  less  than  the  average  curiosity  about 
public  news.  But  as  if  at  the  suggestion  of  a  sudden  thought, 
he  thrust  his  hand  into  a  purse  or  wallet  that  hung  at  his 
waist,  and  explored  it  again  and  again  with  a  look  of  frustration. 

"  Not  an  obolus,  by  Jupiter  !  "  he  murmured,  in  a  language 
which  was  not  Tuscan  or  even  Italian.  "  I  thought  I  had  one 
poor  piece  left.     I  must  get  my  breakfast  for  love,  then  !  " 

He  had  not  gone  many  steps  farther  before  it  seemed 
likely  that  he  had  found  a  quarter  of  the  market  where  that 
medium  of  exchange  might  not  be  rejected. 

In  a  corner,  away  from  any  group  of  talkers,  two  mules  were 
standing,  well  adorned  with  red  tassels  and  collars.  One  of 
them  carried  wooden  milk-vessels,  the  other  a  pair  of  pan- 
niers filled  with  herbs  and  salads.  Resting  her  elbow  on  the 
neck  of  the  mule  that  carried  the  milk,  there  leaned  a  young 
girl,  apparently  not  more  than  sixteen,  with  a  red  hood  sur- 
rounding her  face,  which  was  all  the  more  baby -like  in  its  pret- 
tiness  from  the  entire  concealment  of  her  hair.  The  poor  child, 
perhaps,  was  weary  after  her  labor  in  the  morning  twilight 
in  preparation  for  her  walk  to  market  from  some  castello 
three  or  four  miles  off,  for  she  seemed  to  have  gone  to  sleep  in 
that  half-standing,  half-leaning  posture.  Nevertheless,  our 
stranger  had  no  compunction  in  awaking  her ;  but  the  means 
he  chose  were  so  gentle,  that  it  seemed  to  the  damsel  in  her 
dream  as  if  a  little  sprig  of  thyme  had  touched  her  lips  while 
she  was  stooping  to  gather  the  herbs.  Tl\e  dream  was  broken, 
however,  for  she  opened  her  blue  baby-eyes,  and  started  up 
with  astonishment  and  confusion  to  see  the  young  stranger 
standing  close  before  her.     She  heard  him  speaking  to  her  in  a 


BREAKFAST  FOR   LOVE.  23 

voice  which  seemed  so  strange  and  soft,  that  even  if  she  had 
been  more  collected  she  would  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  he 
said  something  hopelessly  unintelligible  to  her,  and  her  first 
movement  was  to  turn  her  head  a  little  away,  and  lift  up  a 
corner  of  her  green  serge  mantle  as  a  screen.  He  repeated  his 
words,  — 

"  Forgive  me,  pretty  one,  for  awaking  you.  I'm  dying  with 
hunger,  and  the  scent  of  milk  makes  breakfast  seem  more 
desirable  than  ever." 

He  had  chosen  the  words  "  muoio  difame/'  because  he  knew 
they  would  be  familiar  to  her  ears ;  and  he  had  uttered  them 
playfully,  with  the  intonation  of  a  mendicant.  This  time  he  was 
understood ;  the  corner  of  the  mantle  was  dropped,  and  in  a 
few  moments  a  large  cup  of  fragrant  milk  was  held  out  to  him. 
He  paid  no  further  compliments  before  raising  it  to  his  lips, 
and  while  he  was  drinking,  the  little  maiden  found  courage  to 
look  up  at  the  long  dark  curls  of  this  singular-voiced  stranger, 
who  had  asked  for  food  in  the  tones  of  a  beggar,  but  who, 
though  his  clothes  were  much  damaged,  was  unlike  any  beg- 
gar she  had  ever  seen. 

While  this  process  of  survey  was  going  on,  there  was  another 
current  of  feeling  that  carried  her  hand  into  a  bag  which  hung 
by  the  side  of  the  mule,  and  when  the  stranger  set  down  his 
cup,  he  saw  a  large  piece  of  bread  held  out  towards  him,  and 
caught  a  glance  of  the  blue  eyes  that  seemed  intended  as  an 
encouragement  to  him  to  take  this  additional  gift. 

"But  perhaps  that  is  your  own  breakfast,"  he  said.  "No,  I 
have  had  enough  without  payment.  A  thousand  thanks,  my 
gentle  one." 

There  was  no  rejoinder  in  words  ;  but  the  piece  of  bread 
was  pushed  a  little  nearer  to  him,  as  if  in  impatience  at  his 
refusal ;  and  as  the  long  dark  eyes  of  the  stranger  rested  on 
the  baby-face,  it  seemed  to  be  gathering  more  and  more 
courage  to  look  up  and  meet  them. 

"Ah,  then,  if  I  must  take  the  bread,"  he  said,  laying  his 
hand  on  it,  "  I  shall  get  bolder  still,  and  beg  for  another  kiss 
to  make  the  bread  sweeter." 

His  speech  was  getting  wonderfully  intelligible  in  spite  of 
the  strange  voice,  which  had  at  first  almost  seemed  a  thing  to 
make  her  cross  herself.  She  blushed  deeply,  and  lifted  up  a 
corner  of  her  mantle  to  her  mouth  again.  But  just  as  the  too 
presumptuoiis  stranger  was  leaning  forward,  and  had  his  fingers 
on  the  arm  that  held  up  the  screening  mantle,  he  was  startled 
by  a  harsh  voice  close  upon  his  ear. 


24  ROM  OLA. 

"Who  are  i/ou  —  with  a  murrain  to  you  ?  Xo  honest  buyer, 
I'll  warrant,  but  a  hanger-on  of  the  dicers  —  or  something 
worse.  Go  !  dance  off,  and  find  fitter  company,  or  I'll  give 
you  a  tune  to  a  little  quicker  time  than  you'll  like." 

The  young  stranger  drew  back  and  looked  at  the  speaker 
with  a  glance  provokingly  free  from  alarm  and  deprecation, 
and  his  slight  expression  of  saucy  amusement  broke  into  a 
broad  beaming  smile  as  he  surveyed  the  figure  of  his  threaten- 
er.  She  was  a  stout  but  brawny  woman,  with  a  man's  jerkin 
slipped  over  her  green  serge  gamurra  or  gown,  and  the  peaked 
hood  of  some  departed  mantle  fastened  round  her  sunburned 
face,  which,  under  all  its  coarseness  and  premature  wrinkles, 
showed  a  half-sad,  half-ludicrous  maternal  resemblance  to  the 
tender  baby-face  of  the  little  maiden  —  the  sort  of  resemblance 
which  often  seems  a  more  croaking,  shudder-creating  prophecy 
than  that  of  the  death's-head. 

There  was  something  irresistibly  propitiating  in  that  bright 
young  smile,  but  Monna  Ghita  was  not  a  woman  to  betray  any 
weakness,  and  she  went  on  speaking,  apparently  with  height- 
ened exasperation. 

'^  Yes,  yes,  you  can  grin  as  well  as  other  monkeys  in  cap  and 
jerkin.  You're  a  minstrel  or  a  mountebank,  I'll  be  sworn ; 
you  look  for  all  the  world  as  silly  as  a  tumbler  when  he's  been 
upside  down  and  has  got  on  his  heels  again.  And  what  fool's 
tricks  hast  thou  been  after,  Tessa  ?  "  she  added,  turning  to  her 
daughter,  whose  frightened  face  was  more  inviting  to  abuse. 
'■'  Giving  away  the  milk  and  victuals,  it  seems  ;  ay,  ay,  thou'dst 
carry  water  in  thy  ears  for  any  idle  vagabond  that  didn't  like 
to  stoop  for  it,  thou  silly  staring  rabbit !  Turn  thy  back,  and 
lift  the  herbs  out  of  the  panniers,  else  I'll  make  thee  say  a  few 
Aves  without  counting." 

"  Nay,  Madonna,"  said  the  stranger,  with  a  pleading  smile, 
'•  don't  be  angry  with  your  pretty  Tessa  for  taking  pity  on  a 
hungry  traveller,  who  found  himself  unexpectedly  without  a 
quattrino.  Your  handsome  face  looks  so  well  when  it  frowns, 
that  I  long  to  see  it  illuminated  by  a  smile." 

"  Va  via  !  I  know  what  paste  you  are  made  of.  You  may 
tickle  me  with  that  straw  a  good  long  while  before  I  shall 
laugh,  I  can  tell  you.  Get  along,  with  a  bad  Easter  !  else  I'll 
make  a  beauty-spot  or  two  on  that  face  of  yours  that  shall 
spoil  your  kissing  on  this  side  Advent." 

As  Monna  Ghita  lifted  her  formidable  talons  by  way  of 
complying  with  the  first  and  last  requisite  of  eloquence,  Bratti, 
who  had  come  up  a  minute  or  two  before,  had  been  saying  to 


BREAKFAST  FOR   LOVE.  25 

his  companion,  "  What  think  you  of  this  pretty  parrot,  Nello  ? 
Doesn't  his  tongue  smack  of  Venice  ?  " 

"  Nay,  Bratti,"  said  the  barber  in  an  undertone,  "  thy  wis- 
dom has  much  of  the  ass  in  it,  as  I  told  thee  just  now ;  espe- 
cially about  the  ears.  This  stranger  is  a  G-reek,  else  I'm  not 
the  barber  who  has  had  the  sole  and  exclusive  shaving  of  the 
excellent  Demetrio,  and  drawn  more  than  one  sorry  tooth  from 
his  learned  jaw.  And  this  youth  might  be  taken  to  have  come 
straight  from  Olympus  —  at  least  when  he  has  had  a  touch  of 
my  razor." 

"  Orsu  !  Monna  Ghita !  "  continued  ISTello,  not  sorry  to  see 
some  sport ;  "  what  has  happened  to  cause  such  a  thunder- 
storm ?  Has  this  young  stranger  been  misbehaving  him- 
self ?  " 

"By  San  Giovanni!"  said  the  cautious  Bratti,  who  had  not 
shaken  off  his  original  suspicions  concerning  the  shabbily  clad 
possessor  of  jewels,  "  he  did  right  to  run  away  from  me,  if  he 
meant  to  get  into  mischief.  I  can  swear  that  I  found  him 
under  the  Loggia  de'  Cerchi,  with  a  ring  on  his  finger  such  as 
I've  seen  worn  by  Bernardo  Rucellai  himself.  Not  another 
rusty  nail's  worth  do  I  know  about  him." 

''  The  fact  is,"  said  Nello,  eying  the  stranger  good-humored- 
ly,  "this  hello  giovane  has  been  a  little  too  presumptuous  in  ad- 
miring the  charms  of  Monna  Ghita,  and  has  attempted  to  kiss 
her  while  her  daughter's  back  is  turned;  for  I  observe  that 
the  pretty  Tessa  is  too  busy  to  look  this  way  at  present.  Was 
it  not  so,  Messer  ?  "  Nello  concluded,  in  a  tone  of  courtesy. 

"  You  have  divined  the  offence  like  a  soothsayer,"  said  the 
stranger,  laughingly.  "  Only  that  I  had  not  the  good  fortune 
to  find  Monna  Ghita  here  at  first.  I  begged  a  cup  of  milk 
from  her  daughter,  and  had  accepted  this  gift  of  bread,  for 
which  I  was  making  a  humble  offering  of  gratitude,  before  I 
had  the  higher  pleasure  of  being  face  to  face  with  these  riper 
charms  which  I  was  perhaps  too  bold  in  admiring." 

"  Va,  va  !  be  off,  every  one  of  you,  and  stay  in  purgatory  till 
I  pay  to  get  you  out,  will  you  ?  "  said  Monna  Ghita,  fiercely, 
elbowing  jSTello,  and  leading  forward  her  mule  so  as  to  compel 
the  stranger  to  jump  aside.  "Tessa,  thou  simpleton,  bring 
forward  thy  mule  a  bit :  the  cart  will  be  upon  us." 

As  Tessa  turned  to  take  the  mule's  bridle,  she  cast  one 
timid  glance  at  the  stranger,  who  was  now  moving  with  Nello 
out  of  the  way  of  an  approaching  market-cart ;  and  the  glance 
was  just  long  enough  to  seize  the  beckoning  movement  of  his 
hand,  which  indicated  that  he  had  been  watching  for  this 
opportunity  of  an  adieu. 


26  ROMOLA. 

"  Ebhene"  said  Bratti,  raising  his  voice  to  speak  across  the 
cart ;  "  I  leave  you  with  jSTello,  young  man,  for  there's  no  push- 
ing my  bag  and  basket  any  farther,  and  I  have  business  at 
home.  But  you'll  remember  our  bargain,  because  if  you  found 
Tessa  without  me,  it  was  not  my  fault.  Nello  will  show  you 
my  shop  in  the  Ferravecchi,  and  I'll  not  turn  my  back  on 
you." 

"  A  thousand  thanks,  friend  ! "  said  the  stranger,  laughing, 
and  then  turned  away  with  Nello  up  the  narrow  street  which 
led  most  directly  to  the  Piazza  del  Duomo. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   barber's  shop. 

"  To  tell  you  the  truth,"  said  the  young  stranger  to  Nello,  as 
they  got  a  little  clearer  of  the  entangled  vehicles  and  mules, 
"  I  am  not  sorry  to  be  handed  over  by  that  patron  of  mine  to 
one  who  has  a  less  barbarous  accent,  and  a  less  enigmatical 
business.  Is  it  a  common  thing  among  you  Florentines  for  an 
itinerant  trafficker  in  broken  glass  and  rags  to  talk  of  a  shop 
where  he  sells  lutes  and  swords  ?  " 

"  Common  ?  No :  our  Bratti  is  not  a  common  man.  He 
has  a  theory,  and  lives  up  to  it,  which  is  more  than  I  can  say 
for  any  philosopher  I  have  the  honor  of  shaving,"  answered 
Nello,  whose  loquacity,  like  an  over-full  bottle,  could  never 
pour  forth  a  small  dose.  "  Bratti  means  to  extract  the  utmost 
possible  amount  of  pleasure,  that  is  to  say,  of  hard  bargaining, 
out  of  this  life ;  winding  it  up  with  a  bargain  for  the  easiest 
possible  passage  through  purgatory,  by  giving  Holy  Church 
his  winnings  when  the  game  is  over.  He  has  had  his  will 
made  to  that  effect  on  the  cheapest  terms  a  notary  could  be 
got  for.  But  I  have  often  said  to  him,  'Bratti,  thy  bargain  is 
a  limping  one,  and  thou  art  on  the  lame  side  of  it.  Does  it  not 
make  thee  a  little  sad  to  look  at  the  pictures  of  the  Paradiso  ? 
Thou  wilt  never  be  able  there  to  chaffer  for  rags  and  rusty 
nails  :  the  saints  and  angels  want  neither  pins  nor  tinder  ;  and 
except  with  San  Bartolommeo,  who  carries  his  skin  about  in 
an  inconvenient  manner,  I  see  no  chance  of  thy  making  a  bar- 
gain for  second-hand  clothing.'  But  God  pardon  me,"  added 
Nello,  changing   his    tone,  and  crossing   himself,  ''this    light 


THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  27 

talk  ill  beseems  a  morning  when  Lorenzo  lies  dead,  and  the 
Muses  are  tearing  their  hair  —  always  a  painful  thought  to  a 
barber ;  and  you  yourself,  Messere,  are  probably  under  a  cloud, 
for  when  a  man  of  your  speech  and  presence  takes  up  with  so 
sorry  a  night's  lodging,  it  argues  some  misfortune  to  have 
befallen  him." 

'*  What  Lorenzo  is  that  whose  death  you  speak  of  ?  "  said  the 
stranger,  appearing  to  have  dwelt  with  too  anxious  an  interest 
on  this  point  to  have  noticed  the  indirect  inquiry  that  followed 
it. 

"What  Lorenzo?  There  is  but  one  Lorenzo,  I  imagine, 
whose  death  could  throw  the  Mercato  into  an  uproar,  set  the 
lantern  of  the  Duomo  leaping  in  desperation,  and  cause  the 
lions  of  the  Republic  to  feel  under  an  immediate  necessity  to 
devour  one  another.  I  mean  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  the  Pericles 
of  our  Athens  —  if  I  may  make  such  a  comparison  in  the  ear 
of  a  Greek." 

"  Why  not  ?  "  said  the  other,  laughingly  ;  "  for  I  doubt 
whether  Athens,  even  in  the  days  of  Pericles,  could  have  pro- 
duced so  learned  a  barber." 

"  Yes,  yes ;  I  thought  I  could  not  be  mistaken,"  said  the 
rapid  Nello,  "  else  I  have  shaved  the  venerable  Demetrio 
Calcondila  to  little  purpose ;  but  pardon  me,  I  am  lost  in 
wonder :  your  Italian  is  better  than  his,  though  he  has  been 
In  Italy  forty  years  —  better  even  than  that  of  the  accom- 
plished Marullo,  who  may  be  said  to  have  married  the  Italic 
Muse  in  more  senses  than  one,  since  he  has  married  our 
learned  and  lovely  Alessandra  Scala." 

"It  will  lighten  your  wonder  to  know  that  I  come  of  a 
Greek  stock  planted  in  Italian  soil  much  longer  than  the 
mulberry-trees  which  have  taken  so  kindly  to  it.  I  was  born 
at  Bari,  and  my  —  I  mean,  I  was  brought  up  by  an  Italian  — 
and,  in  fact,  I  am  a  Greek,  very  much  as  your  peaches  are 
Persian.  The  Greek  dye  was  subdued  in  me,  I  suppose,  till  I 
had  been  dipped  over  again  by  long  abode  and  much  travel  in 
the  land  of  gods  and  heroes.  And,  to  confess  something  of 
my  private  affairs  to  you,  this  same  Greek  dye,  with  a  few 
ancient  gems  I  have  about  me,  is  the  only  fortune  shipwreck 
has  left  me.  But  —  when  the  towers  fall,  you  know  it  is  an 
ill  business  for  the  small  nest-builders  —  the  death  of  your 
Pericles  makes  me  wish  I  had  rather  turned  my  steps  towards 
Rome,  as  I  should  have  done  but  for  a  fallacious  Minerva  in 
the  shape  of  an  Augustinian  monk.  '  At  Rome,'  he  said,  'you 
will  be  lost  in  a  crowd  of  hungry  scholars ;  but  at  Florence, 


28  ROMOLA. 

every  corner  is  penetrated  by  the  sunshine  of  Lorenzo's 
patronage :  Florence  is  the  best  market  in  Italy  for  such 
commodities  as  yours.' " 

"  Gnaffe,  and  so  it  will  remain,  I  hope,"  said  Nello. 
''Lorenzo  was  not  the  only  patron  and  judge  of  learning  in 
our  city  —  Heaven  forbid  !  Because  he  was  a  large  melon, 
every  other  Florentine  is  not  a  pumpkin,  I  suppose.  Have  we 
not  Bernardo  Kucellai,  and  Alamanno  Rinuccini,  and  plenty 
more  ?  And  if  you  want  to  be  informed  on  such  matters,  I, 
Nello,  am  your  man.  It  seems  to  me  a  thousand  years  till  I 
can  be  of  service  to  a  bel  erudito  like  yourself.  And,  first  of 
all,  in  the  matter  of  your  hair.  That  beard,  my  fine  young 
man,  must  be  parted  with,  were  it  as  dear  to  you  as  the  nymph 
of  your  dreams.  Here  at  Florence,  we  love  not  to  see  a  man 
with  his  nose  projecting  over  a  cascade  of  hair.  But,  remember, 
you  will  have  passed  the  Rubicon,  when  once  you  have  been 
shaven  :  if  you  repent,  and  let  your  beard  grow  after  it  has 
acquired  stoutness  by  a  struggle  with  the  razor,  your  mouth 
will  by  and  by  show  no  longer  what  Messer  Augelo  calls  the 
divine  prerogative  of  lips,  but  will  appear  like  a  dark  cavern 
fringed  with  horrent  brambles." 

"That  is  a  terrible  prophecy,"  said  the  Greek,  "especially 
if  your  Florentine  maidens  are  many  of  them  as  pretty  as  the 
little  Tessa  I  stole  a  kiss  from  this  morning." 

"  Tessa  ?  she  is  a  rough-handed  contadina :  you  will  rise 
into  the  favor  of  dames  who  bring  no  scent  of  the  mule- 
stables  with  them.  But  to  that  end,  you  must  not  have  the 
air  of  a  sgherro,  or  a  man  of  evil  repute :  you  must  look  like 
a  courtier,  and  a  scholar  of  the  more  polished  sort,  such  as  our 
Pietro  Crinito  —  like  one  who  sins  among  well-bred,  well-fed 
people,  and  not  one  who  sucks  down  vile  vino  di  sotto  in  a 
chance  tavern." 

"  With  all  my  heart,"  said  the  stranger.  "  If  the  Floreutine 
Graces  demand  it,  I  am  willing  to  give  up  this  small  matter  of 
my  beard,  but  "  — 

"  Yes,  yes,"  interrupted  Nello.  "  I  know  what  you  would 
say.  It  is  the  hella  zazzera  —  the  hyacinthine  locks,  you  do 
not  choose  to  part  with ;  and  there  is  no  need.  Just  a  little 
pruning  —  ecco  !  —  and  you  will  look  not  unlike  the  illustrious 
prince  Pico  di  Mirandola  in  his  prime.  And  here  we  are  in 
good  time  in  the  Piazza  San  Giovanni,  and  at  the  door  of  my 
shop.  But  you  are  pausing,  I  see :  naturally,  you  want  to 
look  at  our  wonder  of  the  world,  our  Duomo,  our  Santa  Maria 
del  Fiore.     Well,  well,  a  more  glance ;  but  I  beseech  you  to 


THE    CAMPANILE    OF    GIOTTO. 


THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  29 

leave  a  closer  survey  till  you  have  been  shaved :  I  am  quiver- 
ing with  the  inspiration  of  my  art  even  to  the  very  edge  of 
my  razor.     Ah,  then,  come  round  this  way." 

The  mercurial  barber  seized  the  arm  of  the  stranger,  and 
led  him  to  a  point,  on  the  south  side  of  the  piazza,  from  which 
he  could  see  at  once  the  huge  dark  shell  of  the  cupola,  the 
slender  soaring  grace  of  Giotto's  campanile,  and  the  quaint 
octagon  of  San  Giovanni  in  front  of  them,  showing  its  unique 
gates  of  storied  bronze,  which  still  bore  the  somewhat  dimmed 
glory  of  their  original  gilding.  The  inlaid  marbles  were  then 
fre3her  in  their  pink,  and  Avhite,  and  purple,  than  they  are 
now,  when  the  winters  of  four  centuries  have  turned  their 
white  to  the  rich  ochre  of  well-mellowed  meerschaum ;  the 
facade  of  the  cathedral  did  not  stand  ignominious  in  faded 
stucco,  but  had  upon  it  the  magnificent  promise  of  the  half- 
completed  marble  inlaying  and  statued  niches,  which  Giotto 
had  devised  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  ;  and  as  the 
campanile  in  all  its  harmonious  variety  of  color  and  form  led 
the  eyes  upward,  high  into  the  clear  air  of  this  April  morning, 
it  seemed  a  prophetic  symbol,  telling  that  human  life  must 
somehow  and  some  time  shape  itself  into  accord  with  that 
pure  aspiring  beauty. 

But  this  was  not  the  impression  it  appeared  to  produce  on 
the  Greek.  His  eyes  were  irresistibly  led  upward,  but  as  he 
stood  with  his  arms  folded  and  his  curls  falling  backward, 
there  was  a  slight  touch  of  scorn  on  his  lip,  and  when  his  eyes 
fell  again  they  glanced  round  with  a  scanning  coolness  which 
was  rather  piquing  to  ISTello's  Florentine  spirit. 

"  Well,  my  fine  young  man,"  he  said,  with  some  impatience, 
"you  seem  to  make  as  little  of  our  Cathedral  as  if  you  were 
the  Angel  Gabriel  come  straight  from  Paradise.  T  should 
like  to  know  if  you  have  ever  seen  finer  work  than  our  Giotto's 
tower,  or  any  cupola  that  would  not  look  a  mere  mushroom  by 
the  side  of  Brunelleschi's  there,  or  any  marbles  finer  or  more 
cunningly  wrought  than  these  that  our  Signoria  got  from  far- 
off  quarries,  at  a  price  that  would  buy  a  dukedom.  Come, 
now,  have  you  ever  seen  anything  to  equal  them  ?  " 

"  If  you  asked  me  that  question  with  a  scimitar  at  my 
throat,  after  the  Turkish  fashion,  or  even  your  own  razor," 
said  the  young  Greek,  smiling  gayly,  and  moving  on  towards 
the  gates  of  the  Baptistery,  "  I  dare  say  you  might  get  a 
confession  of  the  true  faith  from  me.  But  with  my  tliroat 
free  from  peril,  I  venture  to  tell  you  that  your  buildings 
smack  too  much  of  Christian  barbarism  for  my  taste.     I  have 


30  ROM  OLA. 

a  shuddering  sense  of  what  there  is  inside  —  hideous  smoked 
Madonnas ;  fleshless  saints  in  mosaic,  staring  down  idiotic 
astonishment  and  rebuke  from  tlie  apse ;  skin-clad  skeletons 
hanging  on  crosses,  or  stuck  all  over  with  arrows,  or  stretched 
on  gridirons  ;  women  and  monks  with  heads  aside  in  perpetual 
lamentation.  I  have  seen  enough  of  those  wry-necked  favor- 
ites of  heaven  at  Constantinople.  But  what  is  this  bronze 
door  rough  with  imagery  ?  These  women's  figures  seem 
moulded  in  a  different  spirit  from  those  starved  and  staring 
saints  I  spoke  of :  these  heads  in  high  relief  sjaeak  of  a  human 
mind  within  them,  instead  of  looking  like  an  index  to  per- 
petual spasms  and  colic." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Nello,  with  some  triumph.  "  I  think  we 
shall  show  you  by  and  by  that  our  Florentine  art  is  not  in  a 
state  of  barbarism.  These  gates,  my  fine  young  man,  were 
moulded  half  a  century  ago,  by  our  Lorenzo  Ghiberti,  when  he 
counted  hardly  so  many  years  as  you  do." 

"  Ah,  I  remember,"  said  the  stranger,  turning  away,  like  one 
whose  appetite  for  contemplation  Avas  soon  satisfied.  "  I  have 
heard  that  your  Tuscan  sculptors  and  painters  have  been 
studying  the  antique  a  little.  But  with  monks  for  models,  and 
the  legends  of  mad  hermits  and  martyrs  for  subjects,  the 
vision  of  Olympus  itself  would  be  of  small  use  to  them." 

"  I  understand,"  said  Nello,  with  a  significant  shrug,  as  they 
walked  along.  "  You  are  of  the  same  mind  as  Michele  Marullo, 
ay,  and  as  Angelo  Poliziano  himself,  in  spite  of  his  canonicate, 
when  he  relaxes  himself  a  little  in  my  shop  after  his  lectures, 
and  talks  of  the  gods  awaking  from  their  long  sleep  and 
making  the  woods  and  streams  vital  once  more.  But  he  rails 
against  the  Roman  scholars  who  want  to  make  us  all  talk 
Latin  again  :  '  My  ears,'  he  says,  '  are  sufficiently  flayed  by  the 
barbarisms  of  the  learned,  and  if  the  vulgar  are  to  talk 
Latin  I  would  as  soon  have  been  in  Florence  the  day  they 
took  to  beating  all  the  kettles  in  the  city  because  the  bells 
were  not  enough  to  stay  the  wrath  of  the  saints.'  Ah,  Messer 
Greco,  if  you  want  to  know  the  flavor  of  our  scholarship,  you 
must  frequent  my  shop  :  it  is  the  focus  of  Florentine  intellect, 
and  in  that  sense  the  navel  of  the  earth  —  as  my  great 
predecessor,  Burchiello,  said  of  his  shop,  on  the  more  frivolous 
pretension  that  his  street  of  the  Calimara  was  the  centre  of 
our  city.  And  here  we  are  at  the  sign  of  'Apollo  and  the 
Razor.'  Apollo,  you  see,  is  bestowing  the  razor  on  the 
Triptoleraus  of  our  craft,  the  first  reaper  of  beards,  the  sublime 
Anonhno,  whose  mysterious  identity  is  indicated  by  a  shadow_y 
hand." 


THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  31 

I 

"I  see  thou  hast  had  custom  already,  Sandro,"  continued 
Nello,  addressing  a  solemn-looking  dark-eyed  youth,  who  made 
way  for  them  on  the  threshold.  "  And  now  make  all  clear  for 
this  signor  to  sit  down.  And  prepare  the  finest-scented  lather, 
for  he  has  a  learned  and  a  handsome  chin." 

"  You  have  a  pleasant  little  adytum  there,  I  see,"  said  the 
stranger,  looking  through  a  latticed  screen  which  divided  the 
shop  from  a  room  of  about  equal  size,  opening  into  a  still 
smaller  walled  enclosure,  where  a  few  bays  and  laurels  sur- 
rounded a  stone  Hermes.  "  I  suppose  your  conclave  of  eruditi 
meets  there  ?  " 

"There,  and  not  less  in  my  shop,"  said  Nello,  leading  the 
way  into  the  inner  room,  in  which  were  some  benches,  a  table, 
with  one  book  in  manuscript  and  one  printed  in  capitals  lying 
open  upon  it,  a  lute,  a  few  oil-sketches,  and  a  model  or  two  of 
hands  and  ancient  masks.  "  For  my  shop  is  a  no  less  fitting 
haunt  of  the  Muses,  as  you  will  acknowledge  when  you  feel 
the  sudden  illumination  of  understanding  and  the  serene 
vigor  of  inspiration  that  will  come  to  you  with  a  clear  chin. 
Ah  !  you  can  make  that  lute  discourse,  I  perceive.  I,  too, 
have  some  skill  that  way,  though  the  serenata  is  useless  when 
daylight  discloses  a  visage  like  mine,  looking  no  fresher  than 
an  apple  that  has  stood  the  winter.  But  look  at  that  sketch : 
it  is  a  fancy  of  Piero  di  Cosimo's,  a  strange  freakish  painter, 
who  says  he  saw  it  by  long  looking  at  a  mouldy  wall." 

The  sketch  Nello  pointed  to  represented  three  masks  —  one 
a  drunken  laughing  Satyr,  another  a  sorrowing  Magdalen,  and 
the  third,  which  lay  between  them,  the  rigid,  cold  face  of  a 
Stoic :  the  masks  rested  obliquely  on  the  lap  of  a  little  child, 
whose  cherub  features  rose  above  them  with  something  of  the 
supernal  promise  in  the  gaze  which  painters  had  by  that  time 
learned  to  give  to  the  Divine  Infant. 

"  A  symbolical  picture,  I  see,"  said  the  young  Greek,  touch- 
ing the  lute  while  he  spoke,  so  as  to  bring  out  a  slight  musical 
murmur.  "The  child,  perhaps,  is  the  Golden  Age,  wanting 
neither  worship  nor  philosophy.  And  the  Golden  Age  can  al- 
ways come  back  as  long  as  men  are  born  in  the  form  of  babies, 
and  don't  come  into  the  world  in  cassock  or  furred  mantle. 
Or,  the  child  may  mean  the  wise  philosophy  of  Epicurus, 
removed  alike  from  the  gross,  the  sad,  and  the  severe." 

"  Ah !  everybody  has  his  own  interpretation  for  that 
picture,"  said  Nello;  "and  if  you  ask  Piero  himself  what  he 
meant  by  it,  he  says  his  pictures  are  an  appendix  which  Mes- 
ser  Domeneddio  has  been  pleased  to  make  to  the  universe,  and 


32  ROMOLA. 

if  auy  man  is  in  doubt  what  they  mean,  he  had  better  inquire 
of  Holy  Church.  He  has  been  asked  to  paint  a  picture  after 
the  sketch,  but  he  puts  his  fingers  to  his  ears  and  shakes  his 
head  at  that ;  the  fancy  is  past,  he  says  —  a  strange  animal, 
our  Piero.  But  now  all  is  ready  for  your  initiation  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  razor. 

"  Mysteries  they  may  well  be  called,"  continued  the  barber, 
with  rising  spirits  at  the  prospect  of  a  long  monologue,  as  he 
imprisoned  the  young  Greek  in  the  shroud-like  shaving-cloth ; 
"  mysteries  of  Minerva  and  the  Graces.  I  get  the  flower  of 
men's  thoughts,  because  I  seize  them  in  the  first  moment  after 
shaving.  (Ah  !  you  wince  a  little  at  the  lather ;  it  tickles  the 
outlying  limits  of  the  nose,  I  admit.)  And  that  is  what 
makes  the  peculiar  fitness  of  a  barber's  shop  to  become  a 
resort  of  wit  and  learning.  For,  look  now  at  a  druggist's  shop : 
there  is  a  dull  conclave  at  the  sign  of  '  The  Moor,'  that  pre- 
tends to  rival  mine  ;  but  what  sort  of  inspiration,  I  beseech 
you,  can  be  got  from  the  scent  of  nauseous  vegetable  decoc- 
tions ?  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  you  no  sooner  pass  the 
threshold  than  you  see  a  doctor  of  physic,  like  a  gigantic 
spider  disguised  in  fur  and  scarlet,  waiting  for  his  prey ;  or 
even  see  him  blocking  up  the  doorway  seated  on  a  bony  hack, 
inspecting  saliva.  (Your  chin  a  little  elevated,  if  it  please 
you  :  contemplate  that  angel  who  is  bloAving  the  trumpet  at 
you  from  the  ceiling.  I  had  it  painted  expressly  for  the  regu- 
lation of  my  clients'  chins.)  Besides,  your  druggist,  who 
herborizes  and  decocts,  is  a  man  of  prejudices  :  he  has  poisoned 
people  according  to  a  system,  and  is  obliged  to  stand  up  for 
his  system  to  justify  the  consequences.  Now  a  barber  can  be 
dispassionate ;  the  only  thing  he  necessarily  stands  by  is  the 
razor,  always  providing  he  is  not  an  author.  That  was  the 
flaw  in  my  great  predecessor  Burchiello :  he  was  a  poet,  and 
had  consequently  a  prejudice  about  his  own  poetry.  I  have 
escaped  that ;  I  saw  very  early  that  authorship  is  a  narrow- 
ing business,  in  conflict  with  the  liberal  art  of  the  razor,  which 
demands  an  impartial  affection  for  all  men's  chins.  Ecco, 
Messer!  the  outline  of  your  chin  and  lip  is  as  clear  as  a 
maiden's:  and  now  fix  your  inind  on  a  knotty  question  —  ask 
yourself  whether  you  are  bound  to  spell  Virgil  with  an  i  or  an  e, 
and  say  if  you  do  not  feel  an  unwonted  clearness  on  the  point. 
Only,  if  you  decide  for  the  i,  keep  it  to  yourself  till  your  for- 
tune is  made,  for  the  e  hath  the  stronger  following  in 
Florence.  Ah  !  I  think  I  see  a  gleam  of  still  quicker  wit  in 
yonv  eye.     1    have  it  on  the  authority  of  our  young  Niccold 


THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  33 

Macchiavelli,  himself  keen  enough  to  discern  ilpelo  nelV  uovo, 
as  we  sa}^,  and  a  great  lover  of  delicate  shaving,  though  his 
beard  is  hardly  of  two  years'  date,  that  no  sooner  do  the  hairs 
begin  to  push  themselves,  than  he  perceives  a  certain  gross- 
ness  of  apprehension  creeping  over  him." 

'^  Suppose  you  let  me  look  at  myself,"  said  the  stranger, 
laughing.  '-The  happy  effect  on  my  intellect  is  perhaps  ob- 
structed by  a  little  doubt  as  to  the  effect  of  my  appearance." 

"Behold  yourself  in  this  mirror,  then  ;  it  is  a  Venetian  mir- 
ror from  Murano,  the  true  nosce  teqjsxun,  as  I  have  named  it, 
compared  with  which  the  finest  mirror  of  steel  or  silver  is  mere 
darkness.  See  now,  how  by  diligent  shaving,  the  nether  region 
of  your  face  may  preserve  its  human  outline,  instead  of  pre- 
senting no  distinction  from  the  physiognomy  of  a  bearded  owl 
or  a  Barbary  ape.  I  have  seen  men  whose  beards  have  so  in- 
vaded their  cheeks,  that  one  might  have  pitied  them  as  the 
victims  of  a  sad,  brutalizing  chastisement  befitting  our  Dante's 
Inferno,  if  they  had  not  seemed  to  strut  with  a  strange  triumph 
in  their  extravagant  hairiness." 

"  It  seems  to  me,"  said  the  Greek,  still  looking  into  the 
mirror,  "  that  you  have  taken  away  some  of  my  capital  with 
your  razor  —  I  mean  a  year  or  two  of  age  which  might  have 
won  me  more  ready  credit  for  my  learning.  Under  the  in- 
spection of  a  patron  whose  vision  has  grown  somewhat  dim,  I 
shall  have  a  perilous  resemblance  to  a  maiden  of  eighteen  in 
the  disguise  of  hose  and  jerkin." 

"  Not  at  all,"  said  Nello,  proceeding  to  clip  the  too  extrava- 
gant curls;  "your  proportions  are  not  those  of  a  maiden. 
And  for  your  age,  I  myself  remember  seeing  Angelo  Poliziano 
begin  his  lectures  on  the  Latin  language  when  he  had  a  young- 
er beard  than  yours;  and  between  ourselves,  his  juvenile  ug- 
liness was  not  less  signal  than  his  precocious  scholarship. 
Whereas  you  —  no,  no,  your  age  is  not  against  you ;  but 
between  ourselves,  let  me  hint  to  you  that  your  being  a 
Greek,  though  it  be  only  an  Apulian  Greek,  is  not  in  your 
favor.  Certain  of  our  scholars  hold  that  your  Greek  learning 
is  but  a  wayside  degenerate  plant  until  it  has  been  trans- 
planted into  Italian  brains,  and  that  now  there  is  such  a  plen- 
tiful crop  of  the  superior  quality,  your  native  teachers  are  mere 
propagators  of  degeneracy.  Ecco  !  your  curls  are  now  of  the 
right  proportion  to  neck  and  shoulders ;  rise,  Messer,  and  I 
will  free  you  from  the  encumbrance  of  this  cloth.  Gnaffe  !  I 
almost  advise  you  to  retain  the  faded  jerkin  and  hose  a  little 
longer ;  they  give  you  the  air  of  a  fallen  prince." 


34  ROM  OLA. 

"But  the  question  is,"  said  the  young  Greek,  leaning  against 
the  higli  back  of  a  chair,  and  returning  Nello's  contemplative 
admiration  with  a  look  of  inquiring  anxiety  ;  "  the  question  is, 
in  what  quarter  I  am  to  carry  my  princely  air,  so  as  to  rise 
from  the  said  fallen  condition.  If  your  Florentine  patrons 
of  learning  share  this  scholarly  hostility  to  the  Greeks,  I  see 
not  hoV  your  city  can  be  a  hospitable  refuge  for  me,  as  you 
seemed  to  say  just  now." 

'•'•  Plan  'piano  —  not  so  fast,"  said  Nello,  sticking  his  thumbs 
into  his  belt  and  nodding  to  Sandro  to  restore  order.  "  I  will 
not  conceal  from  you  that  there  is  a  prejudice  against  Greeks 
among  us ;  and  though,  as  a  barber  unsnared  by  authorship,  I 
share  no  prejudices,  I  must  admit  that  the  Greeks  are  not  al- 
ways such  pretty  youngsters  as  yourself :  their  erudition  is 
often  of  an  uncombed,  unmannerly  aspect,  and  incrusted  with 
a  barbarous  utterance  of  Italian,  that  makes  their  converse 
hardly  more  euphonious  than  that  of  a  Tedesco  in  a  state  of 
vinous  loquacity.  And  then,  again,  excuse  me  —  we  Floren- 
tines have  liberal  ideas  about  speech,  and  consider  that  an 
instrument  which  can  flatter  and  promise  so  cleverly  as  the 
tongue,  must  have  been  partly  made  for  those  purposes ;  and 
that  truth  is  a  riddle  for  eyes  and  wit  to  discover,  which  it  were 
a  mere  spoiling  of  sport  for  the  tongue  to  betray.  Still  we 
have  our  limits  beyond  which  we  call  dissimulation  treachery. 
But  it  is  said  of  the  Greeks  that  their  honesty  begins  at  what 
is  the  hanging  point  with  us,  and  that  since  the  old  Furies 
went  to  sleep,  your  Christian  Greek  is  of  so  easy  a  conscience 
that  he  would  make  a  stepping-stone  of  his  father's  corpse." 

The  flush  on  the  stranger's  face  indicated  what  seemed  so 
natural  a  movement  of  resentment,  that  the  good-natured  Nello 
hastened  to  atone  for  his  want  of  reticence. 

" Be  not  offended,  hel  g'lovane ;  I  am  but  repeating  what  I 
hear  in  my  shop ;  as  you  may  perceive,  my  eloquence  is  simply 
the  cream  which  I  skim  off  my  clients'  talk.  Heaven  forbid 
I  should  fetter  my  impartiality  by  entertaining  an  opinion. 
And  for  that  same  scholarly  objection  to  the  Greeks,"  added 
Nello,  in  a  more  mocking  tone,  and  with  a  significant  grimace, 
"  the  fact  is,  you  are  heretics,  Messer ;  jealousy  has  nothing  to 
do  with  it :  if  you  would  just  change  your  opinion  about 
leaven,  and  alter  your  Doxology  a  little,  our  Italian  scholars 
would  think  it  a  thousand  years  till  they  could  give  up  their 
chairs  to  you.  Yes,  yes ;  it  is  chiefly  religious  scruple,  and 
partly  also  the  authority  of  a  great  classic,  —  Juvenal,  is  it 
not  ?     He,   I   gather,  had  his  bile  as  much  stirred    by   the 


THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  S5 

swarm  of  Greeks  as  our  Messer  Angelo,  who  is  fond  of  quoting 
some  passage  about  their  incorrigible  impudence  —  audacia 
-perdita.^^ 

"  Pooh !  the  passage  is  a  compliment,"  said  the  Greek,  who 
had  recovered  himself,  and  seemed  wise  enough  to  take  the 
matter  gayly,  — 

"  '  Ingenium  velox,  audacia  perdita,  sermo 
Promptus,  et  Isseo  torrentior.' 

A  rapid  intellect  and  ready  eloquence  may  carry  off  a  little 
impudence." 

•'  Assuredly,"  said  ISTello.  "  And  since,  as  I  see,  you  know 
Latin  literature  as  well  as  Greek,  you  will  not  fall  into  the 
mistake  of  Giovanni  Argiropulo,  who  ran  full  tilt  against 
Cicero,  and  pronounced  him  all  but  a  pumpkin-head.  For,  let 
me  give  you  one  bit  of  advice,  young  man  —  trust  a  barber 
who  has  shaved  the  best  chins,  and  kept  his  eyes  and  ears 
open  for  twenty  years — oil  your  tongue  well  when  you  talk 
of  the  ancient  Latin  writers,  and  give  it  an  extra  dip  when 
you  talk  of  the  modern.  A  wise  Greek  may  win  favor  among 
us ;  witness  our  excellent  Demetrio,  who  is  loved  by  many, 
and  not  hated  immoderately  even  by  the  most  reuowned 
scholars." 

"  I  discern  the  wisdom  of  your  advice  so  clearly,"  said  the 
Greek,  with  the  bright  smile  which  was  continually  lighting 
up  the  fine  form  and  color  of  his  young  face,  "  that  I  will  ask 
you  for  a  little  more.  Who  now,  for  example,  would  be  the 
most  likely  patron  for  me  ?  Is  there  a  son  of  Lorenzo  who 
inherits  his  tastes  ?  Or  is  there  any  other  wealthy  Florentine 
specially  addicted  to  purchasing  antique  gems  ?  I  have 
a  fine  Cleopatra  cut  in  sardonyx,  and  one  or  two  other 
intaglios  and  cameos,  both  curious  and  beautiful,  worthy  of 
being  added  to  the  cabinet  of  a  prince.  Happily,  I  had  taken 
the  precaution  of  fastening  them  within  the  lining  of  my 
doublet  before  I  set  out  on  my  voyage.  Moreover,  I  should 
like  to  raise  a  small  sum  for  my  present  need  on  this  ring 
of  mine "  (here  he  took  out  the  ring  and  replaced  it  on 
his  finger),  "  if  you  could  recommend  me  to  any  honest  traf- 
ficker." 

"  Let  us  see,  let  us  see,"  said  Nello,  perusing  the  floor,  and 
walking  up  and  down  the  length  of  his  shop.  "  This  is  no 
time  to  apply  to  Piero  de'  Medici,  though  he  has  the  will  to 
make  such  purchases  if  he  could  always  spare  the  money  ;  but 
1  think  it  is  another  sort  of  Cleopatra  that  he  covets  most. 


36  ROM  OLA. 

.  .  .  Yes,  yes,  I  have  it.  What  you  want  is  a  man  of  wealth, 
and  influence,  and  scholarly  tastes  —  not  one  of  your  learned 
porcupines,  bristling  all  over  with  critical  tests,  but  one  whose 
Greek  and  Latin  are  of  a  comfortable  laxity.  And  that  man 
is  Bartolommeo  Scala,  the  secretary  of  our  Kepublic.  He 
came  to  Florence  as  a  poor  adventurer  himself  —  a  miller's 
son  —  a  '  branny  monster/  as  he  has  been  nicknamed  by  our 
honey-lipped  Poliziano,  who  agrees  with  him  as  well  as  my 
teeth  agree  with  lemon-juice.  And,  by  the  by,  that  may  be  a 
reason  why  the  secretary  may  be  the  more  ready  to  do  a  good 
turn  to  a  strange  scholar.  For,  between  you  and  me,  bel 
giovane  —  trust  a  barber  who  has  shaved  the  best  scholars  — 
friendliness  is  much  such  a  steed  as  Ser  Benghi's :  it  will 
hardly  show  much  alacrity  unless  it  has  got  the  thistle  of 
hatred  under  its  tail.  However,  the  secretary  is  a  man  who'll 
keep  his  word  to  you,  even  to  the  halving  of  a  fennel-seed ; 
and  he  is  not  unlikely  to  buy  some  of  your  gems." 

"  But  how  am  I  to  get  at  this  great  man  ?  "  said  the  Greek, 
rather  impatiently, 

"  I  was  coming  to  that,"  said  Nello.  "  Just  now  everybody 
of  any  public  importance  will  be  full  of  Lorenzo's  death,  and 
a  stranger  may  find  it  difficult  to  get  any  notice.  But  in  the 
mean  time,  I  could  take  you  to  a  man  who,  if  he  has  a  mind, 
can  help  you  to  a  chance  of  a  favorable  interview  with  Scala 
sooner  than  anybody  else  in  Florence  —  worth  seeing  for  his 
own  sake  too,  to  say  nothing  of  his  collections,  or  of  his 
daughter  Romola,  who  is  as  fair  as  the  Florentine  lily  before 
it  got  quarrelsome  and  turned  red." 

"  But  if  this  father  of  the  beautiful  Romola  makes  collec- 
tions, why  should  he  not  like  to  buy  some  of  my  gems 
tiimself  ?  " 

Nello  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "  For  two  good  reasons  — 
want  of  sight  to  look  at  the  gems,  and  want  of  money  to  pay 
(or  them.  Our  old  Bardo  de'  Bardi  is  so  blind  that  he  can  see 
no  more  of  his  daughter  than,  as  he  says,  a  glimmering  of 
something  bright  when  she  comes  very  near  him :  doubtless 
fier  golden  hair,  which,  as  Messer  Luigi  Pulci  says  of  his 
lAieridiana's,  '  raggia  come  stella  i^er  sere7io.'  Ah  !  here  come 
some  clients  of  mine,  and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  one  of  them 
fouid  serve  your  turn  about  that  ring." 


LORENZO    DE    MEDICI 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS.  37 


CHAPTER   IV. 

FIRST    IMPRESSIONS. 

"  Good-day,  Messer  Domenico,"  said  jSTello  to  the  foremost 
of  the  two  visitors  who  entered  the  shop,  while  he  nodded 
silently  to  the  other.  "  You  come  as  opportunely  as  cheese  on 
macaroni.  Ah !  you  are  in  haste  —  wish  to  be  shaved  without 
delay — ecco  !  And  this  is  a  morning  when  every  one  has 
grave  matter  on  his  mind.  Florence  orphaned  —  the  very 
pivot  of  Italy  snatched  away  —  heaven  itself  at  a  loss  what 
to  do  next.  Oime  /  Well,  well ;  the  sun  is  nevertheless 
travelling  on  towards  dinner-time  again ;  and  as  I  was  saying, 
you  come  like  cheese  ready  grated.  For  this  3^oung  stranger 
was  wishing  for  an  honorable  trader  who  would  advance  him 
a  sum  on  a  certain  ring  of  value,  and  if  I  had  counted  every 
goldsmith  and  money-lender  in  Florence  on  my  fingers,  I 
couldn't  have  found  a  better  name  than  Menico  Cenniui. 
Besides,  he  hath  other  ware  in  which  you  deal  —  Greek 
learning,  and  young  eyes  —  a  double  implement  which  you 
printers  are  always  in  need  of." 

The  grave  elderly  man,  son  of  that  Bernardo  Cennini,  who, 
twenty  years  before,  having  heard  of  the  new  process  of 
printing  carried  on  by  Germans,  had  cast  his  own  types  in 
Florence,  remained  necessarily  in  lathered  silence  and  passivity 
while  Nello  showered  this  talk  in  his  ears,  but  turned  a  slow 
side  way  gaze  on  the  stranger. 

''This  fine  young  man  has  unlimited  Greek,  Latin,  or 
Italian  at  your  service,"  continued  ISTello,  fond  of  interpreting 
by  very  ample  paraphrase.  "  He  is  as  great  a  wonder  of 
juvenile  learning  as  Francesco  Filelfo  or  our  own  incomparable 
Poliziano.  A  second  Guarino,  too,  for  he  has  had  the  misfor- 
tune to  be  shipwrecked,  and  has  doubtless  lost  a  store  of 
precious  manuscripts  that  might  have  contributed  some 
correctness  even  to  your  correct  editions,  Domenico,  Fortu- 
nately, he  has  rescued  a  few  gems  of  rare  value.  His  name  is 
—  you  said  your  name,  Messer,  was  ?  "  — 

"Tito  Melema,"  said  the  stranger,  slipping  the  ring  from 
his  finger,  and  presenting  it  to  Cennini,  whom  Nello,  not  less 


38  ROMOLA. 

rapid  with  his  razor  than  with  his  tongue,  had  now  released 
from  the  shaving-cloth. 

Meanwhile  the  man  who  had  entered  the  shop  in  company 
with  the  goldsmith  —  a  tall  figure,  about  fifty,  with  a  short 
trimmed  beard,  wearing  an  old  felt  hat  and  a  threadbare 
mantle  —  had  kept  his  eye  fixed  on  the  Greek,  and  now  said 
abruptly,  — 

"  Young  man,  I  am  painting  a  picture  of  Sinon  deceiving 
old  Priam,  and  I  should  be  glad  of  your  face  for  my  Sinon,  if 
you'd  give  me  a  sitting." 

Tito  Melema  started  and  looked  round  with  a  pale  astonish- 
ment in  his  face  as  if  at  a  sudden  accusation ;  but  Nello  left 
him  no  time  to  feel  at  a  loss  for  an  answer :  "  Piero,"  said  the 
barber,  "  thou  art  the  most  extraordinary  compound  of  humors 
and  fancies  ever  packed  into  a  human  skin.  What  trick  wilt 
thou  play  with  the  fine  visage  of  this  young  scholar  to  make 
it  suit  thy  traitor  ?  Ask  him  rather  to  turn  his  eyes  upward, 
and  thou  mayst  make  a  Saint  Sebastian  of  him  that  will 
draw  troops  of  devout  women ;  or,  if  thou  art  in  a  classical 
vein,  put  myrtle  about  his  curls  and  make  him  a  young 
Bacchus,  or  say  rather  a  Phoebus  Apollo,  for  his  face  is  as 
warm  and  bright  as  a  summer  morning ;  it  made  me  his  friend 
in  the  space  of  a  'credo.' " 

"  Ay,  Xello,"  said  the  painter,  speaking  with  abrupt  pauses; 
"and  if  thy  tongue  can  leave  off  its  everlasting  chirping  long 
enough  for  thy  understanding  to  consider  the  matter,  thou 
mayst  see  that  thou  hast  just  shown  the  reason  why  the  face 
of  Messere  will  suit  my  traitor.  A  perfect  traitor  should  have 
a  face  which  vice  can  write  no  marks  on  —  lips  that  will  lie 
with  a  dimpled  smile  — eyes  of  such  agate-like  brightness  and 
depth  that  no  infamy  can  dull  them — cheeks  that  will  rise 
from  a  murder  and  not  look  haggard.  I  say  not  this  young 
man  is  a  traitor  :  I  mean,  he  has  a  face  that  would  make  him 
the  more  perfect  traitor  if  he  had  the  heart  of  one,  which  is 
saying  neither  more  nor  less  than  that  he  has  a  beautiful  face, 
informed  with  rich  young  blood,  that  will  be  nourished  enough 
by  food,  and  keep  its  color  without  much  help  of  virtue.  He 
may  have  the  heart  of  a  hero  along  with  it ;  I  aver  nothing  to 
the  contrary.  Ask  Domenico  there  if  the  lapidaries  can 
always  tell  a  gem  by  the  sight  alone.  And  now  I'm  going  to  put 
the  tow  in  my  ears,  for  thy  chatter  and  the  bells  together  are 
more  than  I  can  endure  :  so  say  no  more  to  me,  but  trim  my 
beard." 

With  these  last  words  Piero  (called  "di  Cosimo,"  from  his 


FIRST  IMPRESSIONS.  39 

master,  Cosimo  Rosselli)  drew  out  two  bits  of  tow,  stuffed 
them  in  his  ears,  and  placed  himself  in  the  chair  before  Nello, 
who  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  cast  a  grimacing  look  of  intel- 
ligence at  the  Greek  as  much  as  to  say,  "  A  whimsical  fellow, 
you  perceive !  Everybody  holds  his  speeches  as  mere 
jokes." 

Tito,  who  had  stood  transfixed,  with  his  long  dark  eyes  rest- 
ing on  the  unknown  man  who  had  addressed  him  so  equivocal- 
ly, seemed  recalled  to  his  self-command  by  Piero's  change  of 
position,  and  apparently  satisfied  with  his  explanation,  was 
again  giving  his  attention  to  Gennini,  who  presently  said,  — 

"  This  is  a  curious  and  valuable  ring,  young  man.  This  in- 
taglio of  the  fish  with  the  crested  serpent  above  it,  in  the 
black  stratum  of  the  onyx,  or  rather  nicolo,  is  well  shown  by 
the  surrounding  blue  of  the  upper  stratum.  The  ring  has, 
doubtless,  a  history  ?  "  added  Cennini,  looking  up  keenly  at  the 
young  stranger. 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  said  Tito,  meeting  the  scrutiny  very  frank- 
ly. "  The  ring  was  found  in  Sicily,  and  I  have  understood 
from  those  who  busy  themselves  with  gems  and  sigils,  that 
both  the  stone  and  intaglio  are  of  virtue  to  make  the  wearer 
fortunate,  especially  at  sea,  and  also  to  restore  to  him  what- 
ever he  may  have  lost.  But,"  he  continued,  smiling,  "  though 
I  have  worn  it  constantly  since  I  quitted  Greece,  it  has  not 
made  me  altogether  fortunate  at  sea,  you  perceive,  unless  I  am 
to  count  escape  from  drowning  as  a  sufficient  proof  of  its 
virtue.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  my  lost  chest  will  come 
to  light ;  but  to  lose  no  chance  of  such  a  result,  Messer,  I  will 
pray  you  only  to  hold  the  ring  for  a  short  space  as  pledge  for 
a  small  sum  far  beneath  its  value,  and  I  will  redeem  it  as  soon 
as  I  can  dispose  of  certain  other  gems  which  are  secured  within 
my  doublet,  or  indeed  as  soon  as  I  can  earn  something  by  any 
scholarly  employment,  if  I  may  be  so  fortunate  as  to  meet 
with  such." 

"  That  may  be  seen,  young  man,  if  you  will  come  with  me," 
said  Cennini.  "  My  brother  Pietro,  who  is  a  better  judge  of 
scholarship  than  I,  will  perhaps  be  able  to  supply  you  with  a 
task  that  may  test  your  capabilities.  Meanwhile,  take  back 
your  ring  until  I  can  hand  you  the  necessary  florins,  and,  if  it 
please  you,  come  along  with  me." 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  Nello,  "go  with  Messer  Domenico,  you 
cannot  go  in  better  company  ;  he  was  born  under  the  constel- 
lation that  gives  a  man  skill,  riches,  and  integrity,  whatever 
that   constellation  may  be,  which  is  of  the  less  consequence 


40  ROMOLA. 

because  babies  can't  choose  their  own  horoscopes,  and,  indeed,  if 
they  could,  there  might  be  an  inconvenient  rush  of  babies  at 
particular  epochs.  Besides,  our  Phoenix,  the  incomparable 
Pico,  has  shown  that  your  horoscopes  are  all  a  nonsensical 
dream — which  is  the  less  troublesome  opinion.  Addio  !  bel 
giova7ie  !  don't  forget  to  come  back  to  me." 

"No  fear  of  that,"  said  Tito,  beckoning  a  farewell,  as  he 
turned  round  his  bright  face  at  the  door.  "  You  are  to  do  me 
a  great  service  :  —  that  is  the  most  positive  security  for  your 
seeing  me  again." 

"  Say  what  thou  wilt,  Piero,"  said  Nello,  as  the  young 
stranger  disappeared,  '•'  I  shall  never  look  at  such  an  outside 
as  that  without  taking  it  as  a  sign  of  a  lovable  nature.  Why, 
thou  wilt  say  next  that  Lionardo,  whom  thou  art  always  rav- 
ing about,  ought  to  have  made  his  Judas  as  beautiful  as  St. 
John!  But  thou  art  as  deaf  as  the  top  of  Mount  Morello 
with  that  accursed  tow  in  thy  ears.  Well,  well :  I'll  get  a 
little  more  of  this  young  man's  history  from  him  before  I  take 
him  to  Bardo  Ba,rdi." 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.     41 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    BLIND    SCHOLAR    AND    HIS    DAUGHTER. 

The  Via  de'Bardi,  a  street  noted  in  the  history  of  Florence, 
lies  in  Oltrarno,  or  that  portion  of  the  city  which  clothes  the 
southern  bank  of  the  river.  It  extends  from  the  Ponte 
Vecchio  to  the  Piazza  de'  Mozzi  at  the  head  of  the  Ponte  alle 
Grazie  ;  its  right-hand  line  of  houses  and  walls  being  backed 
by  the  rather  steep  ascent  which  in  the  fifteenth  century  was 
known  as  the  hill  of  Bogoli,  the  famous  stone-quarry  whence 
the  city  got  its  pavement  —  of  dangerously  unstable  con- 
sistence when  penetrated  by  rains  ;  its  left-hand  buildings 
flanking  the  river  and  making  on  their  northern  side  a  length 
of  quaint,  irregularly  pierced  facade,  of  which  the  waters  give 
a  softened  loving  reflection  as  the  sun  begins  to  decline 
towards  the  western  heights.  But  quaint  as  these  buildings 
are,  some  of  them  seem  to  the  historical  memory  a  too 
modern  substitute  for  the  famous  houses  of  the  Bardi  family, 
destroyed  by  popular  rage  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century. 

They  were  a  proud  and  energetic  stock,  these  Bardi ;  con- 
spicuous among  those  who  clutched  the  sword  in  the  earliest 
world-famous  quarrels  of  Florentines  with  Florentines,  when 
the  narrow  streets  were  darkened  with  the  high  towers  of  the 
nobles,  and  when  the  old  tutelar  god  Mars,  as  he  saw  the  gut- 
ters reddened  with  neighbors'  blood,  might  well  have  smiled 
at  the  centuries  of  lip-service  paid  to  his  rival,  the  Baptist. 
But  the  Bardi  hands  were  of  the  sort  that  not  only  clutch  the 
sword-hilt  with  vigor,  but  love  the  more  delicate  pleasure  of 
fingering  minted  metal :  they  were  matched,  too,  with  true 
Florentine  eyes,  capable  of  discerning  that  power  was  to  be 
won  by  other  means  than  by  rending  and  riving,  and  by  the 
middle  of  the  fourteenth  century  we  find  them  risen  from  their 
original  condition  oi  popolani  to  be  possessors,  by  purchase,  of 
lands  and  strongholds,  and  the  feudal  dignity  of  Counts  of 
Vernio,  disturbing  to  the  jealousy  of  their  republican  fellow- 
citizens.  These  lordly  purchases  are  explained  by  our  seeing 
the  Bardi   disastrously  signalized   only  a  few  years   later   as 


42  ROMOLA. 

standing  in  the  very  front  of  European  commerce  —  the 
Christian  Rothschilds  of  that  time — undertaking  to  furnish 
specie  for  the  wars  of  our  Edward  the  Third,  and  having 
revenues  "  in  kind  "  made  over  to  them  ;  especially  in  wool, 
most  precious  of  freights  for  Florentine  galleys.  Their  august 
debtor  left  them  with  an  august  deficit,  and  alarmed  Sicilian 
creditors  made  a  too  sudden  demand  for  the  payment  of 
deposits,  causing  a  ruinous  shock  to  the  credit  of  the  Bardi 
and  of  associated  houses,  which  was  felt  as  a  commercial 
calamity  along  all  the  coasts  of  the  Mediterranean.  But,  like 
more  modern  bankrupts,  they  did  not,  for  all  that,  hide  their 
heads  in  humiliation ;  on  the  contrary,  they  seemed  to  have 
held  them  higher  than  ever,  and  to  have  been  among  the  most 
arrogant  of  those  grandees,  who,  under  certain  noteworthy  cir- 
cumstances, open  to  all  who  will  read  the  honest  pages  of 
Giovanni  Villani,  drew  upon  themselves  the  exasperation  of 
the  armed  people  in  1343.  The  Bardi,  who  had  made  them- 
selves fast  in  their  street  between  the  two  bridges,  kept  these 
narrow  inlets,  like  panthers  at  bay,  against  the  oncoming  gon- 
falons of  the  people,  and  were  only  made  to  give  way  by  an 
assault  from  the  hill  behind  them.  Their  houses  by  the  river, 
to  the  number  of  twenty -two  (palac/i  e  case  grandi),  were  sacked 
and  burned,  and  many  among  the  chief  of  those  who  bore  the 
Bardi  name  were  driven  from  the  city.  But  an  old  Florentine 
family  was  many-rooted,  and  we  find  the  Bardi  maintaining 
importance  and  rising  again  and  again  to  the  surface  of  Floren- 
tine affairs  in  a  more  or  less  creditable  manner,  implying  an 
untold  family  history  that  would  have  included  even  more 
vicissitudes  and  contrasts  of  dignity  and  disgrace,  of  wealth 
and  poverty,  than  are  usually  seen  on  the  background  of  wide 
kinship.^  But  the  Bardi  never  resumed  their  proprietorship 
in  the  old  street  on  the  banks  of  the  river,  which  in  1492  had 
long  been  associated  with  other  names  of  mark,  and  especially 
with  the  Neri,  who  possessed  a  considerable  range  of  houses  on 
the  side  towards  the  hill. 

In  one  of  these  Neri  houses  there  lived,  however,  a  descend- 
ant of  the  Bardi,  and  of  that  very  branch  which  a  century 
and  a  half  before  had  become  Counts  of  Vernio :  a  descendant 

1  A  sign  that  such  contrasts  were  peculiaily  frequent  in  Florence,  is  the  fact  that 
Saint  Antonine,  Prior  of  San  Marco,  and  afterwards  arclibishop,  in  the  first  half  of 
this  fifteenth  century,  founded  the  society  of  Buonnomini  di  San  Martino  {Good  Men  of 
St.  Martin)  with  the  main  object  of  succoring  the  poveri  vergoffiiosi  —  in  otlier 
words,  paupers  of  good  family.  In  the  records  of  the  famous  Panciatichi  family  we 
find  a  certain  Girolamo  in  this  century  who  was  reduced  to  such  a  state  of  poverty 
that  he  was  obliged  to  seek  charity  for  the  mere  means  of  sustaining  life,  though 
other  members  of  his  family  were  enormously  wealthy. 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR   AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.     43 

who  had  inherited  the  old  family  pride  and  energy,  the  old 
love  of  pre-eminence,  the  old  desire  to  leave  a  lasting  track  of 
his  footsteps  on  the  fast  whirling  earth.  But  the  family 
passions  lived  on  in  him  under  altered  conditions :  this 
descendant  of  the  Bardi  was  not  a  man  swift  in  street  warfare, 
or  one  who  loved  to  play  the  signor,  fortifying  strongholds  and 
asserting  the  right  to  hang  vassals,  or  a  merchant  and  usurer 
of  keen  daring,  who  delighted  in  the  generalship  of  wide 
commercial  schemes  :  he  was  a  man  with  a  deep-veined  hand 
cramped  by  much  copying  of  manuscripts,  who  ate  sparing 
dinners,  and  wore  threadbare  clothes,  at  first  from  choice  and 
at  last  from  necessity ;  who  sat  among  his  books  and  his 
marble  fragments  of  the  past,  and  saw  them  only  by  the  light 
of  those  far-off  younger  days  which  still  shone  in  his  memory  : 
he  was  a  moneyless,  blind  old  scholar  —  the  Bardo  de'  Bardi 
to  whom  Nello,  the  barber,  had  promised  to  introduce  the 
young  Greek,  Tito  Melema. 

The  house  in  which  Bardo  lived  was  situated  on  the  side  of 
the  street  nearest  the  hill,  and  was  one  of  those  large  sombre 
masses  of  stone  building  pierced  by  comparatively  small 
windows,  and  surmounted  by  what  may  be  called  a  roofed 
terrace  or  loggia,  of  which  there  are  many  examples  still  to  be 
seen  in  the  venerable  city.  Grim  doors,  with  conspicuous 
scrolled  hinges,  having  high  up  on  each  side  of  them  a  small 
window  defended  by  iron  bars,  opened  on  a  groined  entrance- 
court,  empty  of  everything  but  a  massive  lamp-iron  suspended 
from  the  centre  of  the  groin.  A  smaller  grim  door  on  the 
left  hand  admitted  to  the  stone  staircase,  and  the  rooms  on  the 
ground  floor.  These  last  were  used  as  a  warehouse  by  the 
proprietor ;  so  was  the  first  floor ;  and  both  were  filled  with 
precious  stores,  destined  to  be  carried,  some  perhaps 
to  the  banks  of  the  Scheldt,  some  to  the  shores  of  Africa, 
some  to  the  isles  of  the  ^gean,  or  to  the  banks  of  the 
Euxine.  Maso,  the  old  serving-man,  when  he  returned  from 
the  Mercato  with  the  stock  of  cheap  vegetables,  had  to 
make  his  slow  way  up  to  the  second  story  before  he  reached 
the  door  of  his  master,  Bardo,  through  which  we  are  about  to 
enter  only  a  few  mornings  after  Nello's  conversation  with  the 
Greek. 

We  follow  Maso  across  the  antechamber  to  the  door  on  the 
left  hand,  through  which  we  pass  as  he  opens  it.  He  merely 
looks  in  and  nods,  while  a  clear  young  voice  says,  "  Ah,  you 
are  come  back,  Maso.    It  is  well.    We  have  wanted  nothing." 

The  voice  came  from  the  farther  end  of  a  long,  spacious 


44  ROMOLA. 

room,  surrounded  with  shelves,  on  which  books  and  antiquities 
were  arranged  in  scrupulous  order.  Here  and  there,  on 
separate  stands  in  front  of  the  shelves,  were  placed  a  beautiful 
feminine  torso ;  a  headless  statue,  with  an  uplifted  muscular 
arm  wielding  a  bladeless  sword ;  rounded,  dimpled,  infantine 
limbs  severed  from  the  trunk,  inviting  the  lips  to  kiss  the  cold 
marble  ;  some  well-preserved  Roman  busts  ;  and  two  or  three 
vases  from  Magna  Grecia.  A  large  table  in  the  centre  was 
covered  with  antique  bronze  lamps  and  small  vessels  in  dark 
pottery.  The  color  of  these  objects  was  chiefly  pale  or  sombre  : 
the  vellum  bindings,  with  their  deep-ridged  backs,  gave  little 
relief  to  the  marble,  livid  with  long  burial;  the  once  splendid 
patch  of  carpet  at  the  farther  end  of  the  room  had  long  been 
worn  to  dimness ;  the  dark  bronzes  wanted  sunlight  upon 
them  to  bring  out  their  tinge  of  green,  and  the  sun  was  not 
yet  high  enough  to  send  gleams  of  brightness  through  the 
narrow  windows  that  looked  on  the  Via  de'  Bardi. 

The  only  spot  of  bright  color  in  the  room  was  made  by  tho 
hair  of  a  tall  maiden  of  seventeen  or  eighteen,  who  was 
standing  before  a  carved  legglo,  or  reading-desk,  such  as  is 
often  seen  in  the  choirs  of  Italian  churches.  The  hair  was  of 
a  reddish  gold  color,  enriched  by  an  unbroken  small  ripple, 
such  as  may  be  seen  in  the  sunset  clouds  on  grandest  autumnal 
evenings.  It  was  confined  by  a  black  fillet  above  her  small 
ears,  from  which  it  rippled  forward  again,  and  made  a  natural 
veil  for  her  neck  above  her  square-cut  gown  of  black  rascia,  or 
serge.  Her  eyes  were  bent  on  a  large  volume  placed  before 
her :  one  long  white  hand  rested  on  the  reading-desk,  and  the 
other  clasped  the  back  of  her  father's  chair. 

The  blind  father  sat  with  head  uplifted  and  turned  a  little 
aside  towards  his  daughter,  as  if  he  were  looking  at  her.  His 
delicate  paleness,  set  off  by  the  black  velvet  cap  which 
surmounted  his  drooping  white  hair,  made  all  the  more 
perceptible  the  likeness  between  his  aged  features  and  those 
of  the  young  maiden,  whose  cheeks  were  also  without  any 
tinge  of  the  rose.  There  was  the  same  refinement  of  brow 
and  nostril  in  both,  counterbalanced  by  a  full  though  firm 
mouth  and  powerful  chin,  which  gave  an  expression  of  proud 
tenacity  and  latent  impetuousness  :  an  expression  carried  out 
in  the  backward  poise  of  the  girl's  head,  and  the  grand  line  of 
her  neck  and  shoulders.  It  was  a  type  of  face  of  which  one 
could  not  venture  to  say  whether  it  would  inspire  love  or  only 
that  unwilling  admiration  which  is  mixed  with  dread:  the 
question  must  be  decided  by  tho  eyes,  which  often  seemed 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.  45 

charged  with  a  more  direct  message  from  the  soul.  But  the 
eyes  of  the  father  had  long  been  silent,  and  the  eyes  of  the 
daughter  were  bent  on  the  Latin  pages  of  Politiau's  "  Miscel- 
lanea," from  which  she  was  reading  aloud  at  the  eightieth 
chapter,  to  the  following  effect :  — 

"There  was  a  certain  nymph  of  Thebes  named  Chariclo, 
especially  dear  to  Pallas ;  and  this  nymph  was  the  mother  of 
Teiresias.  But  once  when  in  the  heat  of  summer,  Pallas,  in 
company  with  Chariclo,  was  bathing  her  disrobed  limbs  in  the 
Heliconian  Hippocrene,  it  happened  that  Teiresias  coming  as 
a  hunter  to  quench  his  thirst  at  the  same  fountain,  inadver- 
tently beheld  Minerva  unveiled,  and  immediately  became 
blind.  For  it  is  declared  in  the  Saturniau  laws,  that  he  who 
beholds  the  gods  against  their  will,  shall  atone  for  it  by  a 
heavy  penalty.  .  .  .  When  Teiresias  had  fallen  into  this 
calamity,  Pallas,  moved  by  the  tears  of  Chariclo,  endowed  him 
with  prophecy  and  length  of  days,  and  even  caused  his 
prudence  and  wisdom  to  continue  after  he  had  entered  among 
the  shades,  so  that  an  oracle  spake  from  his  tomb :  and  she 
gave  him  a  statf,  wherewith,  as  by  a  guide,  he  might  walk 
without  stumbling.  .  ,  .  And  hence,  Nonnus,  in  the  fifth  book 
of  the  '  Dionysiaca,'  introduces  Actaeon  exclaiming  that  he  calls 
Teiresias  happy,  since,  without  dying,  and  with  the  loss  of  his 
eyesight  merely,  he  had  beheld  Minerva  unveiled,  and  thus, 
though  blind,  could  forevermore  carry  her  image  in  his  soul." 

At  this  point  in  the  reading,  the  daughter's  hand  slipped 
from  the  back  of  the  chair  and  met  her  father's,  which  he  had 
that  moment  uplifted ;  but  she  had  not  looked  round,  and  was 
going  on,  though  with  a  voice  a  little  altered  by  some  sup- 
pressed feeling,  to  read  the  Greek  quotation  from  Nonnus, 
when  the  old  man  said,  — 

"  Stay,  Romola ;  reach  me  my  own  copy  of  Nonnus.  It  is 
a  more  correct  copy  than  any  in  Poliziano's  hands,  for  I  made 
emendations  in  it  which  have  not  yet  been  communicated  to 
any  man.  I  finished  it  in  1477,  when  my  sight  was  fast 
failing  me." 

Romola  walked  to  the  farther  end  of  the  room,  with  the 
queenly  step  which  was  the  simple  action  of  her  tall,  finely 
wrought  frame,  without  the  slightest  conscious  adjustment  of 
herself. 

"  Is  it  in  the  right  place,  Romola  ?  "  asked  Bardo,  who  was 
perpetually  seeking  the  assurance  that  the  outward  fact 
continued  to  correspond  with  the  image  which  lived  to  the 
minutest  detail  in  his  mind. 


46  ROMOLA. 

"  Yes,  father ;  at  the  west  end  of  the  room,  on  the  third 
shelf  from  the  bottom,  behind  the  bust  of  Hadrian,  above 
Apollonius  Rhodius  and  Callimachus,  and  below  Lucan  and 
Silius  Italieus." 

As  Romola  said  this,  a  fine  ear  would  have  detected  in  her 
clear  voice  and  distinct  utterance,  a  faint  suggestion  of  weari- 
ness struggling  with  habitual  patience.  But  as  she  ap- 
proached her  father  and  saw  his  arms  stretched  out  a  little 
with  nervous  excitement  to  seize  the  volume,  her  hazel  eyes 
filled  with  pity  ;  she  hastened  to  lay  the  book  on  his  lap,  and 
kneeled  down  by  him,  looking  up  at  him  as  if  she  believed 
that  the  love  in  her  face  must  surely  make  its  way  through  the 
dark  obstruction  that  shut  out  everything  else.  At  thab 
moment  the  doubtful  attractiveness  of  Romola's  face,  in  which 
pride  and  passion  seemed  to  be  quivering  in  the  balance  with 
native  refinement  and  intelligence,  was  transfigured  to  the 
most  lovable  womanliness  by  mingled  pity  and  affection  ;  it 
was  evident  that  the  deepest  fount  of  feeling  within  her  had 
not  yet  wrought  its  way  to  the  less  changeful  features,  and 
only  found  its  outlet  through  her  eyes. 

But  the  father,  unconscious  of  that  soft  radiance,  looked 
flushed  and  agitated  as  his  hands  explored  the  edges  and  back 
of  the  large  book. 

"  The  vellum  is  yellowed  in  these  thirteen  years,  Romola." 

"  Yes,  father,"  said  Romola.  gently  ;  "  but  your  letters  at  tlie 
back  are  dark  and  plain  still  —  fine  Roman  letters  ;  and  the 
Greek  character,"  she  continued,  laying  the  book  open  on  her 
father's  knee,  "  is  more  beautiful  than  that  of  any  of  your 
bought  manuscripts." 

'•'  Assuredly,  child,"  said  Bardo,  passing  his  finger  across  the 
page,  as  if  he  hoped  to  discriminate  line  and  margin,  "  What 
hired  amanuensis  can  be  equal  to  the  scribe  who  loves  the 
words  that  grow  under  his  hand,  and  to  whom  an  error  or  in- 
distinctness in  the  text  is  more  painful  than  a  sudden  darkness 
or  obstacle  across  his  path  ?  And  even  these  mechanical 
ju-inters  who  threaten  to  make  learning  a  base  and  vulgar 
tiling  —  even  they  must  depend  on  the  manuscript  over  which 
we  scholars  have  bent  with  that  insight  into  the  poet's  mean- 
ing which  is  closely  akin  to  the  viens  divinior  of  the  poet 
himself;  unless  they  would  flood  the  world  with  grammatical 
falsities  and  inexplicable  anomalies  that  would  turn  tha  very 
fountain  of  Parnassus  into  a  deluge  of  poisonous  mud.  But 
find  the  passage  in  the  fifth  book,  to  which  Poliziano  refers  — ' 
I  know  it  very  well" 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.      47 

Seating  herself  on  a  low  stool,  close  to  her  father's  knee, 
Romola  took  the  book  on  her  lap  and  read  the  four  verses  con- 
taining the  exclamation  of  Actaeon. 

"It  is  true,  Romola,"  said  Bardo,  when  she  had  finished; 
"it  is  a  true  conception  of  the  poet ;  for  what  is  that  grosser, 
narrower  light  by  which  men  behold  merely  the  petty  scene 
around  them,  compared  with  that  far-stretching,  lasting  light 
which  spreads  over  centuries  of  thought,  and  over  the  life  of 
nations,  and  makes  clear  to  us  the  minds  of  the  immortals  who 
have  reaped  the  great  harvest  and  left  us  to  glean  in  their 
furrows  ?  For  me,  Romola,  even  when  I  could  see,  it  was  with 
the  great  dead  that  I  lived ;  while  the  living  often  seemed  to 
me  mere  spectres  —  shadows  dispossessed  of  true  feeling  and 
intelligence  ;  and  unlike  those  Lamige,  to  whom  Poliziano,  with 
that  superficial  ingenuity  which  I  do  not  deny  to  him,  com- 
pares our  inquisitive  Florentines,  because  they  put  on  their 
eyes  when  they  went  abroad,  and  took  them  off  when  they  got 
home  again,  I  have  returned  from  the  converse  of  the  streets 
as  from  a  forgotten  dream,  and  have  sat  down  among  my 
books,  saying  with  Petrarca,  the  modern  who  is  least  unworthy 
to  be  named  after  the  ancients,  '  Libri  medvillitus  delectant, 
colloquuntur,  consulunt,  et  viva  quadam  nobis  atque  arguta 
familiaritate  junguntur.'  " 

"  And  in  one  thing  you  are  happier  than  your  favorite 
Petrarca,  father,"  said  Romola,  affectionately  humoring  the 
old  man's  disposition  to  dilate  in  this  way  ;  "  for  he  used  to 
look  at  his  copy  of  Homer  and  think  sadly  that  the  Greek 
was  a  dead  letter  to  him  :  so  far,  he  had  the  inward  blindness 
that  you  feel  is  worse  than  your  outward  blindness." 

"  True,  child  ;  for  I  carry  within  me  the  fruits  of  that  fervid 
study  which  I  gave  to  the  Greek  tongue  under  the  teaching 
of  the  younger  Crisolora,  and  Filelfo,  and  Argiropulo ;  though 
that  great  work  in  which  I  had  desired  to  gather,  as  into  a 
firm  web,  all  the  threads  that  my  research  had  laboriously  dis- 
entangled, and  which  would  have  been  the  vintage  of  my  life, 
was  cut  olf  by  the  failure  of  my  sight  and  my  want  of  a  fitting 
coadjutor.  For  the  sustained  zeal  and  unconquerable  patience 
demanded  from  those  who  would  tread  the  unbeaten  paths  of 
knowledge  are  still  less  reconcilable  with  the  wandering, 
vagrant  propensity  of  the  feminine  mind  than  with  the  feeble 
powers  of  the  feminine  body." 

"  Father,"  said  Romola,  with  a  sudden  flush  and  in  an  injured 
tone,  "  I  read  anything  you  wish  me  to  read  ;  and  I  v/ill  look 
out  any  passages  for  you,  and  make  whatever  notes  you  want." 


48  ROMOLA. 

Bardo  shook  his  head,  and  smiled  w-ith  a  bitter  sort  of  pity. 
"  As  well  try  to  be  a  i)entathlos  and  perform  all  the  five  feats 
of  the  palaestra  with  the  limbs  of  a  nymph.  Have  I  forgotten 
thy  fainting  in  the  mere  search  for  the  references  I  needed  to 
explain  a  single  passage  of  Callimachus  ?  " 

"  But,  fathei-,  it  was  the  weight  of  the  books,  and  Maso  can 
help  me  ;  it  was  not  want  of  attention  and  patience." 

Bardo  shook  his  head  again.  "  It  is  not  mere  bodily  organs 
that  I  want :  it  is  the  sharp  edge  of  a  young  mind  to  pierce 
the  way  for  my  somewhat  blunted  faculties.  For  blindness 
acts  like  a  dam,  sending  the  streams  of  thought  backward  along 
the  already-travelled  channels  and  hindering  the  course  on- 
ward. If  my  son  had  not  forsaken  me,  deluded  by  debasing 
fanatical  dreams,  worth}^  only  of  an  energumen  whose  dwell- 
ing is  among  tombs,  I  might  have  gone  on  and  seen  my 
path  broadening  to  the  end  of  my  life  ;  for  he  was  a  youth  of 
great  promise.  .  .  .  But  it  has  closed  in  now,"  the  old 
man  continued,  after  a  short  pause  ;  "  it  has  closed  in  now ;  — 
all  but  the  narrow  track  he  has  left  me  to  tread  —  alone  in  my 
blindness," 

Romola  started  from  her  seat,  and  carried  away  the  large 
volume  to  its  place  again,  stung  too  acutely  by  her  father's 
last  words  to  remain  motionless  as  well  as  silent ;  and  when 
she  turned  away  from  the  shelf  again,  she  remained  standing 
at  some  distance  from  him,  stretching  her  arms  downward  and 
clasping  her  fingers  tightly  as  she  looked  with  a  sad  dreariness 
in  her  young  face  at  the  lifeless  objects  around  her  —  the 
parchment  backs,  the  unchanging  mutilated  marble,  the  bits 
of  obsolete  bronze  and  clay. 

Bardo,  though  usually  susceptible  to  Romola's  movements 
and  eager  to  trace  them,  was  now  too  entirely  pre-occupied  by 
the  pain  of  rankling  memories  to  notice  her  departure  from 
his  side. 

"  Yes,"  he  went  on,  "  with  my  son  to  aid  me,  I  might  have 
had  my  due  share  in  the  triumphs  of  this  century  ;  the  names 
of  the  Bardi,  father  and  son,  might  have  been  held  reverently 
on  the  lips  of  scholars  in  the  ages  to  come  ;  not  on  account  of 
frivolous  verses  or  philosophical  treatises,  which  are  super- 
fluous and  presumptuous  attempts  to  imitate  the  inimitable, 
such  as  allure  vain  men  like  Panhormita,  and  from  which  even 
the  admirable  Poggio  did  not  keep  himself  sufficiently  free  ; 
but  because  we  should  have  given  a  lamp  whereby  men  might 
have  studied  the  su[)reme  production  of  the  past.  For  why  is  a 
young  man  like  Poliziano  (who  was  not  yet  born  when  I  was 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.     49 

already  held  worthy  to  maintain  a  discussioii  with  Thomas  of 
Sarzana)  to  have  a  glorious  memory  as  a  commentator  on  the 
Pandects  —  why  is  Ficino,  whose  Latin  is  an  offence  to  me, 
and  who  wanders  purblind  among  the  superstitious  fancies 
that  marked  the  decline  at  once  of  art,  literature,  and  philos- 
ophy, to  descend  to  posterity  as  the  very  high  priest  of 
Platonism,  while  I,  who  am  more  than  their  equal,  have  not 
effected  anything  but  scattered  work,  which  will  be  appropri- 
ated by  other  men  ?  Why  ?  but  because  my  son,  whom  I  had 
brought  up  to  replenish  my  ripe  learning  with  young  enter- 
prise, left  me  and  all  liberal  pursuits  that  he  might  lash  him- 
self and  howl  at  midnight  with  besotted  friars  —  that  he  might 
go  wandering  on  pilgrimages  befitting  men  who  know  of  no 
past  older  than  the  missal  and  the  crucifix  ? — left  me  when 
the  night  was  already  beginning  to  fall  on  me." 

In  these  last  words  the  old  man's  voice,  which  had  risen 
high  in  indignant  protest,  fell  into  a  tone  of  reproach  so  trem- 
ulous and  plaintive  that  Romola,  turning  her  eyes  again 
towards  the  blind  aged  face,  felt  her  heart  swell  with  forgiving 
pity.  She  seated  herself  by  her  father  again,  and  placed  her 
hand  on  his  knee  —  too  i^roud  to  obtrude  consolation  in  words 
that  might  seem  like  a  vindication  of  her  own  value,  yet  wish- 
ing to  comfort  him  by  some  sign  of  her  presence. 

"  Yes,  Romola,"  said  Bardo,  automatically  letting  his  left 
hand,  with  its  massive  prophylactic  rings,  fall  a  little  too  heav- 
ily on  the  delicate  blue-veined  back  of  the  girl's  right,  so  that 
she  bit  her  lip  to  prevent  herself  from  starting.  "If  even 
Florence  only  is  to  remember  me,  it  can  but  be  on  the  same 
ground  that  it  will  remember  Niccolo  Niccoli  —  because  I  for- 
sook the  vulgar  pursuit  of  wealth  in  commerce  that  I  might 
devote  myself  to  collecting  the  precious  remains  of  ancient 
art  and  wisdom,  and  leave  them,  after  the  example  of  the 
munificent  Romans,  for  an  everlasting  possession  to  my  fel- 
low-citizens. But  why  do  I  say  Florence  only  ?  If  Florence 
remembers  me,  will  not  the  world  remember  me  ?  .  .  . 
Yet,"  added  Bardo,  after  a  short  pause,  his  voice  falling  again 
into  a  saddened  key,  "  Lorenzo's  untimely  death  has  raised  a 
new  difficulty.  I  had  his  promise  —  I  should  have  had  his 
bond  —  that  my  collection  should  always  bear  my  name  and 
should  never  be  sold,  though  the  harpies  might  clutch  every- 
thing else;  but  there  is  enough  for  them  —  there  is  more  than 
enough  —  and  for  thee,  too,  Romola,  there  will  be  enough. 
Besides,  thou  wilt  marry ;  Bernardo  reproaches  me  that  I  do 
not  seek  a  fitting  parentado  for  thee,  and  we  will  delay  no 
longer,  we  will  think  about  it." 


50  ROM  OLA. 

"  No,  no,  father ;  what  could  you  do  ?  besides,  it  is  useless : 
wait  till  some  one  seeks  me,"  said  Romola,  hastily. 

"  Nay,  my  child,  that  is  not  the  paternal  duty.  It  was  not 
so  held  by  the  ancients,  and  in  this  respect  Florentines  have 
not  degenerated  from  their  ancestral  customs." 

"  But  I  will  study  diligently,"  said  Romola,  her  eyes  dilating 
with  anxiety.  ''  I  will  become  as  learned  as  Cassandra  Fedele : 
I  will  try  and  be  as  useful  to  you  as  if  I  had  been  a  boy,  and 
then  perhaps  some  great  scholar  will  want  to  marry  me,  and 
will  not  mind  about  a  dowry ;  and  he  will  like  to  come  and 
live  with  you,  and  he  will  be  to  you  in  place  of  my  brother 
.  .  .  and  you  will  not  be  sorry  that  I  was  a  daughter." 

There  was  a  rising  sob  in  Romola's  voice  as  she  said  the 
last  words,  which  touched  the  fatherly  fibre  in  Bardo.  He 
stretched  his  hand  upward  a  little  in  search  of  her  golden 
hair,  and  as  she  placed  her  head  under  his  hand,  he  gently 
stroked  it,  leaning  towards  her  as  if  his  eyes  discerned  some 
glimmer  there. 

"  Nay,  Romola  mia,  I  said  not  so ;  if  I  have  pronounced  an 
anathema  on  a  degenerate  and  ungrateful  son,  I  said  not  that 
I  could  wish  thee  other  than  the  sweet  daughter  thou  hast 
been  to  me.  For  what  son  could  have  tended  me  so  gently  in 
the  frequent  sickness  I  have  had  of  late  ?  And  even  in 
learning  thou  art  not,  according  to  thy  measure,  contemptible. 
Something  perhaps  were  to  be  wished  in  thy  capacity  of 
attention  and  memory,  not  incompatible  even  with  the  feminine 
mind.  But  as  Calcondila  bore  testimony,  when  he  aided  me 
to  teach  thee,  thou  hast  a  ready  apprehension,  and  even  a 
wide-glancing  intelligence.  And  thou  hast  a  man's  nobility  of 
soul :  thou  hast  never  fretted  me  with  thy  petty  desires  as 
thy  mother  did.  It  is  true  I  have  been  careful  to  keep  thee 
aloof  from  the  debasing  influence  of  thy  own  sex,  with  their 
sparrow-like  frivolity  and  their  enslaving  superstition,  except, 
indeed,  from  that  of  our  cousin  Brigida,  who  may  well 
serve  as  a  scarecrow  and  a  warning.  And  though  —  since  I 
agree  with  the  divine  Petrarca,  when  he  declares,  quoting 
the  '  Aulularia '  of  Plautus,  who  again  was  indebted  for 
the  truth  to  the  supreme  Greek  intellect,  '  Optimam  fceminaiu 
nullam  esse,  alia  licet  alia  pejor  sit '  —  I  cannot  boast  that  thou 
art  entirely  lifted  out  of  that  lower  category  to  which  Nature 
assigned  thee,  nor  even  that  in  erudition  thou  art  on  a  par  with 
the  more  learned  women  of  this  age ;  thou  art,  nevertheless  — 
yes,  Romola  mia,"  said  the  old  man,  his  pedantry  again  melt- 
ing into  tenderness,  "thou  art  my  sweet  daughter,  and  thy 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.      51 

voice  is  as  the  lower  notes  of  tlie  flute,  '  dulcis,  clurabilis,  clara, 
pura,  secans  aera  et  auribus  sedens,'  according  to  the  choice 
words  of  Quintilian  ;  and  Bernardo  tells  me  thou  art  fair,  and 
thy  hair  is  like  the  brightness  of  the  morning,  and  indeed  it 
seems  to  me  that  I  discern  some  radiance  from  thee.  Ah !  I 
know  how  all  else  looks  in  this  room,  but  thy  form  I  only 
guess  at.  Thou  art  no  longer  the  little  woman  six  years  old, 
that  faded  for  me  into  darkness  ;  thou  art  tall,  and  thy  arm  is 
but  little  below  mine.     Let  us  walk  together." 

The  old  man  rose,  and  Komola,  soothed  by  these  beams  of 
tenderness,  looked  happy  again  as  she  drew  his  arm  within 
hers,  and  placed  in  his  right  hand  the  stick  which  rested  at 
the  side  of  his  chair.  While  Bardo  had  been  sitting,  he  had 
seemed  hardly  more  than  sixty :  his  face,  though  pale,  had 
that  refined  texture  in  which  wrinkles  and  lines  are  never 
deep ;  but  now  that  he  began  to  walk  he  looked  as  old  as  he 
really  was  —  rather  more  than  seventy;  for  his  tall  spare 
frame  had  the  student's  stoop  of  the  shoulders,  and  he  stepped 
with  the  undecided  gait  of  the  blind, 

"No,  Romola,"  he  said,  pausing  against  the  bust  of  Hadrian, 
and  passing  his  stick  from  the  right  to  the  left  that  he  might 
explore  the  familiar  outline  with  a  "  seeing  hand."  "  There 
will  be  nothing  else  to  preserve  my  memory  and  carry  down 
my  name  as  a  member  of  the  great  republic  of  letters  — 
nothing  but  my  library  and  my  collection  of  antiquities.  And 
they  are  choice,"  continued  Bardo,  pressing  the  bust  and 
speaking  in  a  tone  of  insistence.  "  The  collections  of  Niccolo 
I  know  were  larger;  but  take  any  collection  which  is  the 
work  of  a  single  man — that  of  the  great  Boccaccio  even  — 
mine  will  surpass  it.  That  of  Poggio  was  contemptible 
compared  with  mine.  It  will  be  a  great  gift  to  unborn 
scholars.  And  there  is  nothing  else.  For  even  if  I  were  to 
yield  to  the  wish  of  Aldo  Manuzio  when  he  sets  up  his  press 
at  Venice,  and  give  him  the  aid  of  my  annotated  manuscripts, 
I  know  well  what  would  be  the  result :  some  other  scholar's 
name  would  stand  on  the  title-page  of  the  edition  —  some 
scholar  who  would  have  fed  on  my  honey,  and  then  declared 
in  his  preface  that  he  had  gathered  it  all  himself  fresh  from 
Hymettus.  Else,  why  have  I  refused  the  loan  of  many  an 
annotated  codex  ?  why  have  I  refused  to  make  public  any  of 
my  translations  ?  why  ?  but  because  scholarship  is  a  system 
of  licensed  robbery,  and  your  man  in  scarlet  and  furred  robe 
who  sits  in  judgment  on  thieves,  is  himself  a  thief  of  the 
thoughts  and  the  fame  that  belong  to  his  fellows.    But  against 


52  ROM  OLA. 

that  robbery  Bardo  de'  Bardi  shall  struggle — though  blind 
and  forsaken,  he  shall  struggle.  I  too  have  a  right  to  be 
remembered  —  as  great  a  right  as  Pontanus  or  Merula,  whose 
names  will  be  foremost  on  the  lips  of  posterity,  because  they 
sought  patronage  and  found  it ;  because  they  had  tongues  that 
could  flatter,  and  blood  that  was  used  to  be  nourished  from 
the  client's  basket.     I  have  a  right  to  be  remembered." 

The  old  man's  voice  had  become  at  once  loud  and  tremulous, 
and  a  pink  flush  overspread  his  proud,  delicately  cut  features, 
while  the  habitually  raised  attitude  of  his  head  gave  the  idea 
that  behind  the  curtain  of  his  blindness  he  saw  some  imaginary 
high  tribunal  to  which  he  was  appealing  against  the  injustice 
of  Fame. 

Romola  was  moved  with  sympathetic  indignation,  for  in  her 
nature  too  there  lay  the  same  large  claims,  and  the  same  spirit 
of  struggle  against  their  denial.  She  tried  to  calm  her  father 
by  a  still  prouder  word  than  his. 

"Nevertheless,  father,  it  is  a  great  gift  of  the  gods  to  be 
born  with  a  hatred  and  contempt  of  all  injustice  and  meanness. 
Yours  is  a  higher  lot,  never  to  have  lied  and  truckled,  never  to 
have  shared  honors  won  by  dishonor.  There  is  strength  in 
scorn,  as  there  was  in  the  martial  fury  by  which  men  became 
insensible  to  wounds." 

"It  is  well  said,  Romola.  It  is  a  Promethean  word  thou 
hast  uttered,"  answered  Bardo,  after  a  little  interval  in  which 
he  had  begun  to  lean  on  his  stick  again,  and  to  walk  on. 
"  And  I  indeed  am  not  to  be  pierced  by  the  shafts  of  Fortune. 
My  armor  is  the  ens  triplex  of  a  clear  conscience,  and  a  mind 
nourished  by  the  precepts  of  philosophy.  '  For  men,'  says 
Epictetus,  '  are  disturbed  not  by  things  themselves,  but  by 
their  opinions  or  thoughts  concerning  those  things.'  And 
again,  'whosoever  will  be  free,  let  him  not  desire  or  dread 
that  which  it  is  in  the  power  of  others  either  to  deny  or  inflict : 
otherwise,  he  is  a  slave.'  And  of  all  such  gifts  as  are  depend- 
ent on  the  caprice  of  fortune  or  of  men,  I  have  long  ago 
learned  to  say,  with  Horace  —  who,  however,  is  too  wavering 
in  his  philosophy,  vacillating  between  the  precepts  of  Zeno 
and  the  less  worthy  maxims  of  Epicurus,  and  attempting,  as 
we  say,  '  duabus  sellis  sedere '  —  concerning  such  accidents,  I 
say,  with  the  pregnant  brevity  of  the  poet,  — 

'  Sunt  qui  non  habeant,  est  qui  non  curat  habere.' 

He  is  referring  to  gems,  and  purple,  and  other  insignia  of 
wealth ;  but  I  may  apply  his   v/ords  not  less  justly  to  the 


THE  BLIND  SCHOLAR  AND  HIS  DAUGHTER.      63 

tributes  men  pay  us  with  their  lips  and  their  pens,  which  are 
also  matters  of  purchase,  and  often  with  base  coin.  Yes, 
'i?ianis'  —  hollow,  empty — is  the  epithet  justly  bestowed  on 
Fame." 

They  made  the  tour  of  the  room  in  silence  after  this; 
but  Bardo's  lip-born  maxims  were  as  powerless  over  the 
passion  which  had  been  moving  him,  as  if  they  had  been 
written  on  parchment  and  hung  round  his  neck  in  a  sealed 
bag;  and  he  presently  broke  forth  again  in  a  new  tone  of 
insistence. 

"  Inanis?  yes,  if  it  is  a  lying  fame;  but  not  if  it  is  the 
just  meed  of  labor  and  a  great  purpose.  I  claim  my  right :  it 
is  not  fair  that  the  work  of  my  brain  and  my  hands  should 
not  be  a  monument  to  me  —  it  is  not  just  that  my  labor  should 
bear  the  name  of  another  man.  It  is  but  little  to  ask,"  the 
old  man  went  on,  bitterly,  "  that  my  name  should  be  over  the 
door  —  that  men  should  own  themselves  debtors  to  the  Bardi 
Library  in  Florence.  They  Avill  speak  coldly  of  me,  perhaps : 
'  a  diligent  collector  and  transcriber,'  they  will  say,  '  and  also 
of  some  critical  ingenuity,  but  one  who  could  hardly  be 
conspicuous  in  an  age  so  fruitful  in  illustrious  scholars.  Yet 
he  merits  our  pity,  for  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life  he  was 
blind,  and  his  only  son,  to  whose  education  he  had  devoted 
his  best  years '  —  Nevertheless,  my  name  will  be  remembered, 
and  men  will  honor  me  :  not  with  the  breath  of  flattery,  pur- 
chased by  mean  bribes,  but  because  I  have  labored,  and  be- 
cause my  labors  will  remain.  Debts !  I  know  there  are 
debts ;  and  there  is  thy  dowry,  Komola,  to  be  paid.  But 
there  must  be  enough  —  or,  at  least,  there  can  lack  but  a 
small  sum,  such  as  the  Signoria  might  well  provide.  And 
if  Lorenzo  had  not  died,  all  would  have  been  secured  and 
settled.     But  now  "... 

At  this  moment  Maso  opened  the  door,  and  advancing  to 
his  master,  announced  that  ISTello,  the  barber,  had  desired 
him  to  say,  that  he  was  come  Avith  the  Greek  scholar  whom 
he  had  asked  leave  to  introduce. 

"  It  is  well,"  said  the  old  man.     "  Bring  them  in." 

Bardo,  conscious  that  he  looked  more  dependent  when  he 
was  walking,  liked  always  to  be  seated  in  the  presence  of 
strangers,  and  Romola,  without  needing  to  be  told,  conducted 
him  to  his  chair.  She  was  standing  by  him  at  her  full  height, 
in  quiet  majestic  self-possession,  when  the  visitors  entered ; 
and  the  most  penetrating  observer  would  hardly  have  divined 
that  this  proud  pale  face,  at  tlie  slightest  touch  on  the  fibres 


64  ROM  OLA. 

of  affection  or  pity,  could  become  passionate  with  tenderness, 
or  that  this  woman,  who  imposed  a  certain  awe  on  those  who 
approached  her,  was  in  a  state  of  girlish  simplicity  and 
ignorance  concerning  the  world  outside  her  father's  books. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

DAWNING    HOPES. 

When  Maso  opened  the  door  again,  and  ushered  in  the  two 
visitors,  Nello,  first  making  a  deep  reverence  to  Romola, 
gently  pushed  Tito  before  him,  and  advanced  with  him 
towards  her  father. 

"  Messer  Bardo,"  he  said,  in  a  more  measured  and  respectful 
tone  than  was  usual  with  him,  "  I  have  the  honor  of  present- 
ing to  you  the  Greek  scholar,  who  has  been  eager  to  have 
speech  of  you,  not  less  from  the  report  I  have  made  to  him  of 
your  learning  and  your  priceless  collections,  than  because  of 
the  furtherance  your  patronage  may  give  him  under  the 
transient  need  to  which  he  has  been  reduced  by  shipwreck. 
His  name  is  Tito  Melema,  at  your  service." 

Romola's  astonishment  could  hardly  have  been  greater  if 
the  stranger  had  worn  a  panther-skin  and  carried  a  thyrsus ; 
for  the  cunning  barber  had  said  nothing  of  the  Greek's  age  or 
appearance  ;  and  among  her  father's  scholarly  visitors,  she  had 
hardly  ever  seen  any  but  middle-aged  or  gray-headed  men. 
There  was  only  one  masculine  face,  at  once  youthful  and  beau- 
tiful, the  image  of  which  remained  deeply  impressed  on  her 
mind:  it  was  that  of  her  brother,  who  long  years  ago  had 
taken  her  on  his  knee,  kissed  her,  and  never  come  back  again : 
a  fair  face,  with  sunny  hair,  like  her  own.  But  the  habitual 
attitude  of  her  mind  towards  strangers  —  a  proud  self- 
dependence  and  determination  to  ask  for  nothing  even  by  a 
smile  —  confirmed  in  her  by  her  father's  complaints  against 
the  world's  injustice,  was  like  a  snowy  embankment  hemming 
in  the  rush  of  admiring  surprise.  Tito's  bright  face  showed 
its  rich-tinted  beauty  without  any  rivalry  of  color  above  his 
black  sajo  or  tunic  reaching  to  the  knees.  It  seemed  like  a 
wreath  of  spring,  dropped  suddenly  in  Romola's  young  but 
wintry  life,  which  had  inherited  nothing  but  memories  — 
memories   of  a   dead   mother,  of  a   lost   brother,  of   a   blind 


DAWNING  HOPES.  65 

father's  happier  time  —  memories  of  a  far-off  light,  love,  and 
beauty,  that  lay  embedded  in  dark  mines  of  books,  and  could 
hardly  give  out  their  brightness  again  until  they  were  kindled 
for  her  by  the  torch  of  some  known  joy.  Nevertheless,  she 
returned  Tito's  bow,  made  to  her  on  entering,  with  the  same 
pale  proud  face  as  ever ;  but,  as  he  approached,  the  snow 
melted,  and  when  he  ventured  to  look  towards  her  again,  while 
Nello  was  speaking,  a  pink  flush  overspread  her  face,  to  vanish 
again  almost  immediately,  as  if  her  imperious  will  had  recalled 
it.  Tito's  glance,  on  the  contrary,  had  that  gentle,  beseeching 
admiration  in  it  which  is  the  most  propitiating  of  appeals  to  a 
proud,  shy  woman,  and  is  perhaps  the  only  atonement  a  man 
can  make  for  being  too  handsome.  The  finished  fascination 
of  his  air  came  chiefly  from  the  absence  of  demand  and 
assumption.  It  was  that  of  a  fleet,  soft-coated,  dark-eyed  ani- 
mal that  delights  you  by  not  bounding  away  in  indifference 
from  you,  and  unexpectedly  pillows  its  chin  on  your  palm,  and 
looks  up  at  you  desiring  to  be  stroked —  as  if  it  loved  you. 

"  Messere,  I  give  you  welcome,"  said  Bardo,  with  some  con- 
descension ;  "  misfortune  wedded  to  learning,  and  especially  to 
Greek  learning,  is  a  letter  of  credit  that  should  win  the  ear  of 
ever}^  instructed  Florentine  ;  for,  as  you  are  doubtless  aware, 
since  the  period  when  your  countryman,  Manuelo  Crisolora,  dif- 
fused the  light  of  his  teaching  in  the  chief  cities  of  Italy,  now 
nearly  a  century  ago,  no  man  is  held  worthy  of  the  name  of 
scholar  who  has  acquired  merely  the  transplanted  and  deriva- 
tive literature  of  the  Latins  ;  rather,  such  inert  students  are 
stigmatized  as  opici  or  barbarians  according  to  the  phrase  of 
the  Romans  themselves,  who  frankly  replenished  their  urns 
at  the  fountain-head.  I  am,  as  you  perceive,  and  as  Nello  has 
doubtless  forewarned  you,  totally  blind :  a  calamity  to  which 
we  Florentines  are  held  especially  liable,  whether  owing  to  the 
cold  winds  which  rush  upon  us  in  spring  from  the  passes  of 
the  Apennines,  or  to  that  sudden  transition  from  the  cool 
gloom  of  our  houses  to  the  dazzling  brightness  of  our  summer 
sun,  by  which  the  lippi  are  said  to  have  been  made  so  numer- 
ous among  the  ancient  Romans ;  or,  in  fine,  to  some  occult 
cause  which  eludes  our  superficial  surmises.  But  I  pray  you 
be  seated :  Nello,  my  friend,  be  seated." 

Bardo  paused  until  his  fine  ear  had  assured  him  that 
the  visitors  were  seating  themselves,  and  that  Romola 
was  taking  her  usual  chair  at  his  right  hand.  Then  he 
said,  — 

"  From  what  part  of  Greece  do  you  come,  Messere  ?     I  had 


56  ROM  OLA. 

thought  that  your  unhappy  country  had  been  almost  exhausted 
of  those  sons  who  coukl  cherish  in  their  minds  any  image  of 
her  original  glory,  though  indeed  the  barbarous  Sultans  have 
of  late  shown  themselves  not  indisposed  to  ingraft  on  their 
wild  stock  the  precious  vine  which  their  own  fierce  bands  have 
hewn  down  and  trampled  under  foot.  From  what  part  of 
Greece  do  you  come  ?  " 

"  I  sailed  last  from  Kauplia,"  said  Tito ;  "  but  I  have  resided 
both  at  Constantinople  and  Thessalonica,  and  have  travelled 
in  various  parts  little  visited  by  Western  Christians  since  the 
triumph  of  the  Turkish  arms.  I  should  tell  you,  however, 
Messere,  that  I  was  not  born  in  Greece,  but  at  Bari.  I  spent 
the  first  sixteen  years  of  my  life  in  Southern  Italy  and 
Sicily." 

While  Tito  was  speaking,  some  emotion  passed  like  a  breath 
on  the  waters,  across  Bardo's  delicate  features ;  he  leaned  for- 
ward, put  out  his  right  hand  towards  Romola,  and  turned  his 
head  as  if  about  to  speak  to  her ;  but  then,  correcting  himself, 
turned  away  again,  and  said,  in  a  subdued  voice,  — 

"  Excuse  me  ;  is  it  not  true  —  you  are  young  ?  " 

"  I  am  three  and  twenty,"  said  Tito. 

"Ah,"  said  Bardo,  still  in  a  tone  of  subdued  excitement, 
"and  you  had,  doubtless,  a  father  who  cared  for  your  early  in- 
struction—  who,  perhaps,  was  himself  a  scholar?" 

There  was  a  slight  pause  before  Tito's  answer  came  to  the 
ear  of  Bardo  ;  but  for  Romola  and  Nello  it  began  with  a  slight 
shock  that  seemed  to  pass  through  him,  and  cause  a  momentary 
quivering  of  the  lip ;  doubtless  at  the  revival  of  a  supremely 
painful  remembrance. 

"Yes,"  he  replied,  "at  least  a  fatlier  by  adoption.  He  was 
a  Neapolitan,  and  of  accomplished  scholarship,  both  Latin  and 
Greek.  But,"  added  Tito,  after  another  slight  pause,  "he  is 
lost  to  me  —  was  lost  on  a  voyage  he  too  rashly  undertook  to 
Delos." 

Bardo  sank  backward  again,  too  delicate  to  ask  another 
question  that  might  probe  a  sorrow  which  he  divined  to  be 
recent.  Romola,  who  knew  well  what  were  the  fibres  that 
Tito's  voice  had  stirred  in  her  father,  felt  that  this  new 
acquaintance  had  with  wonderful  suddenness  got  within  the 
barrier  that  lay  between  them  and  the  alien  Avorld.  Nello, 
thinking  that  the  evident  check  given  to  the  conversation 
offered  a  graceful  opportunity  for  relieving  himself  from 
silence,  said,  — 

"  In  truth,  it  is  as  clear  as  Venetian  glass  that  this  line 


DAWNING  HOPES.  67 

young  man  has  had  the  best  training;  for  the  two  Cennini 
nave  set  him  to  work  at  their  Greek  sheets  already,  and  it 
seems  to  me  they  are  not  men  to  begin  cutting  before  they 
have  felt  the  edge  of  their  tools ;  they  tested  him  well  before- 
hand, we  may  be  sure,  and  if  there  are  two  things  not  to  be 
hidden  —  love  and  a  cough  —  I  say  there  is  a  third,  and  that 
is  ignorance,  when  once  a  man  is  obliged  to  do  something 
besides  wagging  his  head.  The  tonsor  inequalls  is  inevitably 
betrayed  when  he  takes  the  shears  in  his  hand  ;  is  it  not  true, 
Messer  Bardo  ?  I  speak  after  the  fashion  of  a  barber,  but,  as 
Luigi  Pulci  says,  — 

"  'Perdonimi  s'io  fallo:  chi  m'ascolta 
Intenda  il  mio  volgarcol  suo  latino.'  " 

"  Nay,  my  good  Kello,"  said  Bardo,  with  an  air  of  friendly 
severity,  "  you  are  not  altogether  illiterate,  and  might  doubt- 
less have  made  a  more  resiaectable  progress  in  learning  if  you 
had  abstained  somewhat  from  the  cicalata  and  gossip  of  the 
street-corner,  to  which  our  Florentines  are  excessively  addicted ; 
but  still  more  if  you  had  not  clogged  your  memory  with  those 
frivolous  productions  of  which  Luigi  Fulci  has  furnished  the 
most  peccant  exemplar  —  a  compendium  of  extravagances  and 
incongruities  the  farthest  removed  from  the  models  of  a  pure 
age,  and  resembling  rather  the  grylli  or  conceits  of  a  period 
when  mystic  meaning  was  held  a  warrant  for  monstrosity  of 
form ;  with  this  difference,  that  while  the  monstrosity  is 
retained,  the  mystic  meaning  is  absent;  in  contemptible 
contrast  with  the  great  poem  of  Virgil,  who,  as  I  long  held 
with  Filelfo,  before  Landino  had  taken  upon  him  to  expound 
the  same  opinion,  embodied  the  deepest  lessons  of  philosophy 
in  a  graceful  and  well-knit  fable.  And  I  cannot  but  regard 
the  multiplication  of  these  babbling,  lawless  productions,  albeit 
countenanced  by  the  patronage,  and  in  some  degree  the  example 
of  Lorenzo  himself,  otherwise  a  friend  to  true  learning,  as  a 
sign  that  the  glorious  hopes  of  this  century  are  to  be  quenched 
in  gloom ;  nay,  that  they  have  been  the  delusive  prologue  to 
an  age  worse  than  that  of  iron  —  the  age  of  tinsel  and 
gossamer,  in  which  no  thought  has  substance  enough  to  be 
moulded  into  consistent  and  lasting  form." 

"Once  more,  pardon,"  said  Nello,  opening  his  palms  out- 
wards, and  shrugging  his  shoulders,  "  I  find  myself  knowing 
so  many  things  in  good  Tuscan  before  I  have  time  to  think  of 
the  Latin  for  them ;  and  Messer  Luigi's  rhymes  are  always 
slipping  off  the  lips  of  my  customers  :  —  that  is  what  corrupts 


58  ROM  OLA. 

me.  And,  indeed,  talking  of  customers,  I  have  left  my  shop 
and  my  reputation  too  long  in  the  custody  of  my  slow  Sandro, 
who  does  not  deserve  even  to  be  called  a  tonsor  inequalis,  but 
rather  to  be  pronounced  simply  a  bungler  in  the  vulgar 
tongue.  So  with  your  permission,  Messer  Bardo,  I  will  take 
my  leave  —  well  understood  that  I  am  at  your  service  when- 
ever Maso  calls  upon  me.  It  seems  a  thousand  years  till  I 
dress  and  perfume  the  damigella's  hair,  which  deserves  to  shine 
in  the  heavens  as  a  constellation,  though  indeed  it  were  a  pity 
for  it  ever  to  go  so  far  out  of  reach." 

Three  voices  made  a  fugue  of  friendly  farewells  to  Nello,  as 
he  retreated  with  a  bow  to  Romola  and  a  beck  to  Tito.  The 
acute  barber  saw  that  the  pretty  youngster,  who  had  crept  into 
his  liking  by  some  strong  magic,  was  well  launched  in  Bardo's 
favorable  regard;  and  satisfied  that  his  introduction  had  not 
miscarried  so  far,  he  felt  the  propriety  of  retiring. 

The  little  burst  of  wrath,  called  forth  by  Nello's  unlucky 
quotation,  had  diverted  Bardo's  mind  from  the  feelings  which 
had  just  before  been  hemming  in  further  speech,  and  he  now 
addressed  Tito  again  with  his  ordinary  calmness. 

"  Ah !  young  man,  you  are  hapjiy  in  having  been  able  to 
unite  the  advantages  of  travel  with  those  of  study,  and  you 
will  be  welcome  among  us  as  a  bringer  of  fresh  tidings  from 
a  land  which  has  become  sadly  strange  to  us,  except  through 
the  agents  of  a  now  restricted  commerce  and  the  reports  of 
hasty  pilgrims.  For  those  days  are  in  the  far  distance  which 
I  myself  witnessed,  when  men  like  Aurispa  and  Guarino  went 
out  to  Greece  as  to  a  storehouse,  and  came  back  laden  with 
manuscripts  which  every  scholar  was  eager  to  borrow  —  and, 
be  it  OAvned  with  shame,  not  always  willing  to  restore ;  nay, 
even  the  days  when  erudite  Gi'eeks  flocked  to  our  shores  for  a 
refuge,  seem  far  off  now  —  farther  off  than  the  on-coming 
of  my  blindness.  But  doubtless,  young  man,  research  after 
the  treasures  of  antiquity  was  not  alien  to  the  purpose  of  your 
travels  ?  " 

"  Assuredly  not,"  said  Tito.  "  On  the  contrary,  my  com- 
panion —  my  father  —  was  willing  to  risk  his  life  in  his  zeal 
for  the  discovery  of  inscriptions  and  other  traces  of  ancient 
civilization." 

"  And  I  trust  there  is  a  record  of  his  researches  and  their 
lesults,"  said  Bardo,  eagerly,  *'  since  they  must  be  even  more 
precious  than  those  of  Ciriaco,  which  I  have  diligently  availed 
myself  of,  though  they  are  not  always  illuminated  by  adequate 
learning." 


DAWNING  HOPES.  59 

"  There  was  such  a  record,"  said  Tito,  "  but  it  was  lost,  like 
everything  else,  in  the  shipwreck  I  sulfered  below  Ancona. 
The  only  record  left  is  such  as  remains  in  our  —  in  my 
memory." 

"  You  must  lose  no  time  in  committing  it  to  paper,  young 
man,"  said  Bardo,  with  growing  interest.  "Doubtless  you 
remember  much,  if  you  aided  in  transcription ;  for  when  I  was 
your  age,  words  wrought  themselves  into  my  mind  as  if  they 
had  been  fixed  by  the  tool  of  the  graver ;  wherefore  I  constantly 
marvel  at  the  capriciousness  of  my  daughter's  memory,  which 
grasps  certain  objects  with  tenacity,  and  lets  fall  all  those 
minutiae  whereon  depends  accuracy,  the  very  soul  of  scholar- 
ship. But  I  apprehend  no  such  danger  with  you,  young  man, 
if  your  will  has  seconded  the  advantages  of  your  training." 

When  Bardo  made  this  reference  to  his  daughter,  Tito 
ventured  to  turn  his  eyes  towards  her,  and  at  the  accusation 
against  her  memory  his  face  broke  into  its  brightest  smile, 
which  was  reflected  as  inevitably  as  sudden  sunbeams  in 
Romola's.  Conceive  the  soothing  delight  of  that  smile  to  her ! 
Romola  had  never  dreamed  that  there  was  a  scholar  in  the 
world  who  would  smile  at  a  deficiency  for  which  she  was 
constantly  made  to  feel  herself  a  culprit.  It  was  like  the 
dawn  of  a  new  sense  to  her  —  the  sense  of  comradeship.  They 
did  not  look  away  from  each  other  immediately,  as  if  the 
smile  had  been  a  stolen  one ;  they  looked  and  smiled  with 
frank  enjoyment. 

"  She  is  not  really  so  cold  and  proud,"  thought  Tito. 

"Does  he  forget  too,  I  wonder?"  thought  Romola.  '-'Yet 
I  hope  not,  else  he  will  vex  my  father." 

But  Tito  was  obliged  to  turn  away,  and  answer  Bardo's 
question. 

"  I  have  had  much  practice  in  transcription,"  he  said ;  "  but 
in  the  case  of  inscriptions  copied  in  memorable  scenes, 
rendered  doubly  impressive  by  the  sense  of  risk  and 
adventure,  it  may  have  happened  that  my  retention  of 
written  characters  has  been  weakened.  On  the  plain  of  the 
Eurotas,  or  among  the  gigantic  stones  of  Mycenae  and  Tyrins 
—  especiall}'  when  the  fear  of  the  Turk  hovers  over  one  like 
a  vulture  —  the  mind  wanders,  even  though  the  hand  writes 
faithfully  what  the  eye  dictates.  But  something  doubtless  I 
have  retained,"  added  Tito,  with  a  modesty  which  was  not 
false,  though  he  was  conscious  that  it  was  politic,  "  something 
that  might  be  of  service  if  illustrated  and  corrected  by  a 
wider  learning  than  my  own." 


60  ROMOLA. 

"That  is  well  spoken,  young  man,"  said  Bardo,  delighted 
"And  I  will  not  withhold  from  you  such  aid  as  I  can  give,  if 
you  like  to  communicate  with  me  concerning  your  recollec- 
tions. I  foresee  a  work  which  will  be  a  useful  supplement  to 
the  '  Isolario '  of  Christoforo  Buondelmonte,  and  which  may 
take  rank  with  the  *  Itineraria '  of  Ciriaco  and  the  admirable 
Ambrogio  Traversari.  But  we  must  prepare  ourselves  for 
calumny,  j^oung  man,"  Bardo  went  on  with  energy,  as  if  the 
work  were  already  growing  so  fast  that  the  time  of  trial  was 
near ;  "  if  your  book  contains  novelties  you  will  be  charged 
with  forgery ;  if  my  elucidations  should  clash  with  any 
principles  of  interpretation  adopted  by  another  scholar,  our 
personal  characters  will  be  attacked,  we  shall  be  impeached 
with  foul  actions ;  you  must  prepare  yourself  to  be  told  that 
your  mother  was  a  fish-woman,  and  that  your  father  was  a 
renegade  priest  or  a  hanged  malefactor.  I  myself,  for  having 
shown  error  in  a  single  preposition,  had  an  invective  written 
against  me  wherein  I  was  taxed  with  treachery,  fraud, 
indecency,  and  even  hideous  crimes.  Such,  my  young  friend 
—  such  are  the  flowers  with  which  the  glorious  path  of 
scholarship  is  strewed !  But  tell  me,  then :  I  have  learned 
much  concerning  Byzantium  and  Thessalonica  long  ago  from 
Demetrio  Calcondila,  who  has  but  lately  departed  from 
Florence ;  but  you,  it  seems,  have  visited  less  familiar 
scenes  ?" 

"  Yes  ;  we  made  what  I  may  call  a  pilgrimage  full  of  danger, 
for  the  sake  of  visiting  places  which  have  almost  died  out  of 
the  memory  of  the  West,  for  they  lie  away  from  the  track  of 
pilgrims ;  and  my  father  used  to  say  that  scholars  themselves 
hardly  imagine  them  to  have  any  existence  out  of  books.  He 
was  of  opinion  that  a  new  and  more  glorious  era  would  open 
for  learning  when  men  should  begin  to  look  for  their  commen- 
taries on  the  ancient  writers  in  the  remains  of  cities  and  temples, 
nay,  in  the  paths  of  the  rivers,  and  on  the  face  of  the  valleys 
and  the  mountains." 

"  Ah  ! "  said  Bardo,  fervently,  "  your  father,  then,  was  not 
a  common  man.  Was  he  fortunate,  may  I  ask  ?  Had  he  many 
friends  ?  "  These  last  words  were  uttered  in  a  tone  charged 
with  meaning. 

"No;  he  made  enemies — chiefly,  I  believe,  by  a  certain 
impetuous  candor  ;  and  they  liindered  his  advancement,  so  that 
he  lived  in  obscurity.  And  he  would  never  stoop  to  conciliate ; 
he  could  never  forget  an  injury," 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Bardo  again,  with  a  long,  deep  intonation. 


DAWNING  HOPES.  61 

"  Among  our  hazardous  expeditions,"  continued  Tito,  willing 
to  prevent  further  questions  on  a  point  so  personal,  "  I  remem- 
ber with  particular  vividness  a  hastil}^  snatched  visit  to  Athens. 
Our  hurry,  and  the  double  danger  of  being  seized  as  prisoners 
by  the  Turks,  and  of  our  galley  raising  anchor  before  we  could 
return,  made  it  seem  like  a  fevered  vision  of  the  night  —  the 
wide  plain,  the  girdling  mountains,  the  ruined  porticos  and 
columns,  either  standing  far  aloof,  as  if  receding  from  our 
hurried  footsteps,  or  else  jammed  in  confusedly  among  the 
dwellings  of  Christians  degraded  into  servitude,  or  among  the 
forts  and  turrets  of  their  Moslem  conquerors,  who  have  their 
stronghold  on  the  Acropolis." 

"  You  fill  me  with  surprise,"  said  Bardo.  "  Athens,  then,  is 
not  utterly  destroyed  and  swept  away,  as  I  had  imagined." 

"  No  wonder  you  should  be  under  that  mistake,  for  few 
even  of  the  Greeks  themselves,  who  live  beyond  the  mountain 
boundary  of  Attica,  know  anything  about  the  present  condition 
of  Athens,  or  Setine,  as  the  sailors  call  it.  I  remember,  as  we 
were  rounding  the  promontory  of  Sunium,  the  Greek  pilot  we 
had  on  board  our  Venetian  galley  pointed  to  the  mighty  col- 
umns that  stand  on  the  summit  of  the  rock  —  the  remains,  as 
you  know  well,  of  the  great  temple  erected  to  the  goddess 
Athena,  who  looked  down  from  that  high  shrine  with  triumph 
at  her  conquered  rival  Poseidon ;  —  well,  our  Greek  pilot, 
pointing  to  those  columns,  said,  '  That  was  the  school  of  the 
great  philosopher  Aristotle.'  And  at  Athens  itself,  the  monk 
who  acted  as  our  guide  in  the  hasty  view  we  snatched,  insisted 
most  on  showing  us  the  spot  where  St.  Philip  baptized  the 
Ethiopian  eunuch,  or  some  such  legend." 

"Talk  not  of  monks  and  their  legends,  young  man  !"  said 
Bardo,  interrupting  Tito  impetuously.  "  It  is  enough  to  over- 
lay human  hope  and  enterprise  with,  an  eternal  frost  to  think 
that  the  ground  which  was  trodden  by  philosophers  and  poets 
is  crawled  over  by  those  insect-swarms  of  besotted  fanatics  or 
howling  hypocrites." 

"  Perdio,  I  have  no  affection  for  them,"  said  Tito,  with  a 
shrug ;  "  servitude  agrees  well  with  a  religion  like  theirs,  which, 
lies  in  the  renunciation  of  all  that  makes  life  precious  to  other 
men.  And  they  carry  the  yoke  that  befits  them  :  their  matin 
chant  is  drowned  by  the  voice  of  the  muezzin,  who,  from  the 
gallery  of  the  high  tower  on  the  Acropolis,  calls  every  Mussul- 
man to  his  prayers.  That  tower  springs  from  the  Parthenon 
itself ;  and  every  time  we  paused  and  directed  our  eyes  towards 
it,  our  guide  set  up  a  wail,  that  a  temple  which  had  once  been 


62  ROMOLA. 

won  from  the  diabolical  uses  of  the  pagans  to  become  the  temple 
of  another  virgin  than  Pallas  —  the  Virgin-Mother  of  God  — 
was  now  again  perverted  to  the  accursed  ends  of  the  Moslem. 
It  was  the  sight  of  those  walls  of  the  Acropolis,  which  disclosed 
themselves  in  the  distance  as  we  leaned  over  the  side  of  our 
galley  when  it  was  forced  by  contrary  winds  to  anchor  in  the 
Piraeus,  that  fired  my  father's  mind  with  the  determination  to 
see  Athens  at  all  risks,  and  in  spite  of  the  sailors'  warnings 
that  if  we  lingered  till  a  change  of  wind,  they  would  depart 
without  us  :  but,  after  all,  it  was  impossible  for  us  to  venture 
near  the  Acropolis,  for  the  sight  of  men  eager  in  examining 
'  old  stones '  raised  the  suspicion  that  we  were  Venetian  spies, 
and  we  had  to  hurry  back  to  the  harbor." 

"  We  will  talk  more  of  these  things,"  said  Bardo,  eagerly. 
"  You  must  recall  everything,  to  the  minutest  trace  left  in 
your  memory.  You  will  win  the  gratitude  of  after-times  by 
leaving  a  record  of  the  aspect  Greece  bore  while  yet  the  bar- 
barians had  not  swept  away  every  trace  of  the  structures  that 
Pausanias  and  Pliny  described:  you  will  take  those  great 
writers  as  your  models,  and  such  contribution  of  criticism 
and  suggestion  as  my  riper  mind  can  supply  shall  not  be 
wanting  to  you.  There  will  be  much  to  tell ;  for  you  have 
travelled,  you  said,  in  the  Peloponnesus  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  and  in  Boeotia  also :  I  have  rested  in  the  groves  of 
Helicon,  and  tasted  of  the  fountain  Hippocrene.  But  on  every 
memorable  spot  in  Greece  conquest  after  conquest  has  set  its 
seal,  till  there  is  a  confusion  of  ownership  even  in  ruins,  that 
only  close  study  and  comparison  could  unravel.  High  over 
every  fastness,  from  the  plains  of  Lacedaemon  to  the  straits  of 
Thermopylae,  there  towers  some  huge  Prankish  fortress,  once 
inhabited  by  a  French  or  Italian  marquis,  now  either  aban- 
doned or  held  by  Turkish  bands." 

"  Stay  ! "  cried  Bardo,  whose  mind  was  now  too  thoroughly 
pre-occupied  by  the  idea  of  the  future  book  to  attend  to  Tito's 
further  narration.  "  Do  you  think  of  writing  in  Latin  or  Greek  ? 
Doubtless  Greek  is  the  more  ready  clothing  for  your  thoughts, 
and  it  is  the  nobler  language.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  Latin 
is  the  tongue  in  which  we  shall  measure  ourselves  with  the 
larger  and  more  famous  number  of  modern  rivals.  And  if  you 
are  less  at  ease  in  it,  I  will  aid  you  —  yes,  I  will  spend  on  you 
that  long-accumulated  study  which  was  to  have  been  thrown 
iuto  the  channel  of  another  work  —  a  work  in  which  I  myself 
was  to  have  had  a  helpmate." 

Bardo  paused  a  moment,  and  then  added,  — 


DAWNING  HOPES.  63 

"  But  "who  knows  whether  that  work  may  not  be  executed 
yet  ?  For  you,  too,  young  man,  have  been  brought  up  by  a 
father  who  poured  into  your  mind  all  the  long-gathered  stream 
of  his  knowledge  and  experience.     Our  aid  might  be  mutual." 

Romola,  who  had  watched  her  father's  growing  excitement, 
and  divined  well  the  invisible  currents  of  feeling  that  deter- 
mined every  question  and  remark,  felt  herself  in  a  glow  of 
strange  anxiety ;  she  turned  her  eyes  on  Tito  continually,  to 
watch  the  impression  her  father's  words  made  on  him,  afraid 
lest  he  should  be  inclined  to  dispel  these  visions  of  co-operation 
which  were  lighting  up  her  father's  face  with  a  new  hope.  But 
no  !  He  looked  so  bright  and  gentle  :  he  must  feel,  as  she  did, 
that  in  this  eagerness  of  blind  age  there  was  piteousness  enough 
to  call  forth  inexhaustible  patience.  How  much  more  strongly 
he  would  feel  this  if  he  knew  about  her  brother !  A  girl  of 
eighteen  imagines  the  feelings  behind  the  face  that  has  moved 
her  with  its  sympathetic  youth,  as  easily  as  primitive  people 
imagined  the  humors  of  the  gods  in  fair  weather  :  what  is  she 
to  believe  in,  if  not  in  this  vision  woven  from  within  ? 

And  Tito  was  really  very  far  from  feeling  impatient.  He 
delighted  in  sitting  there  with  the  sense  that  Eomola's  atten- 
tion was  fixed  on  him,  and  that  he  could  occasionally  look  at 
her.  He  was  pleased  that  Bardo  should  take  an  interest  in 
him ;  and  he  did  not  dwell  with  enough  seriousness  on  the 
prospect  of  the  work  in  which  he  was  to  be  aided,  to  feel 
moved  by  it  to  anything  else  than  that  easy,  good-humored 
acquiescence  which  was  natural  to  him. 

''  I  shall  be  proud  and  happy,"  he  said,  in  answer  to  Bardo's 
last  words,  "  if  my  services  can  be  held  a  meet  offering  to  the 
matured  scholarship  of  Messere.  But  doubtless  "  —  here  he 
looked  towards  Romola  —  "  the  lovely  damigella,  your  daugh- 
ter, makes  all  other  aid  superfluous ;  for  I  have  learned  from 
Nello  that  she  has  been  nourished  on  the  highest  studies  from 
her  earliest  years." 

"You  are  mistaken,"  said  Romola ;  "  I  am  by  no  means  suffi- 
cient to  my  father :  I  have  not  the  gifts  that  are  necessary  for 
scholarship." 

Romola  did  not  make  this  self-depreciatory  statement  in  a 
tone  of  anxious  humility,  but  with  a  proud  gravity. 

"  Nay,  my  Romola,"  said  her  father,  not  willing  that  the 
stranger  should  have  too  low  a  conception  of  his  daughter's 
powers ;  "  thou  art  not  destitute  of  gifts ;  rather,  thou  art 
endowed  beyond  the  measure  of  women ;  but  thou  hast  withal 
the  woman's   delicate   frame,  which   ever  craves  repose  and 


64  ROM  OLA. 

variety,  and  so  begets  a  wandering  imagination.  My  daugh- 
ter "  —  turning  to  Tito  —  "  has  been  very  precious  to  me,  till- 
ing up  to  the  best  of  her  power  the  place  of  a  son.  For  I  had 
once  a  son  "... 

Bardo  checked  himself;  he  did  not  wish  to  assume  an  atti- 
tude of  complaint  in  the  presence  of  a  stranger,  and  he  re- 
membered that  this  young  man,  in  whom  he  had  unexpectedly 
become  so  much  interested,  was  still  a  stranger,  towards  whom 
it  became  him  rather  to  keep  the  position  of  a  patron.  His 
pride  was  roused  to  double  activity  by  the  fear  that  he  had 
forgotten  his  dignity. 

"But,"  he  resumed,  in  his  original  tone  of  condescension, 
"  we  are  departing  from  what  I  believe  is  to  you  the  most 
important  business.  Nello  informed  me  that  you  had  certain 
gems  which  you  would  fain  dispose  of,  and  that  you  desired  a 
passport  to  some  man  of  wealth  and  taste  who  would  be  likely 
to  become  a  purchaser." 

"  It  is  true ;  foi-,  though  I  have  obtained  employment,  as  a 
corrector  with  the  Cennini,  my  payment  leaves  little  margin 
beyond  the  provision  of  necessaries,  and  would  leave  less  but 
that  my  good  friend  Nello  insists  on  my  hiring  a  lodging  from 
him,  and  saying  nothing  about  the  rent  till  better  days." 

"Nello  is  a  good-hearted  prodigal,"  said  Bardo;  "  and  though, 
with  that  ready  ear  and  ready  tongue  of  his,  he  is  too  much 
like  the  ill-famed  Margites — knowing  many  things  and  know- 
ing them  all  badly,  as  I  hinted  to  him  but  now  —  he  is  never- 
theless 'abnormis  sapiens,'  after  the  manner  of  our  born 
Florentines.  But  have  you  the  gems  with  you  ?  I  would 
willingly  know  what  they  are  —  yet  it  is  useless  :  no,  it  might 
only  deepen  regret.     I  cannot  add  to  my  store." 

"  I  have  one  or  two  intaglios  of  much  beauty,"  said  Tito, 
proceeding  to  draw  from  his  wallet  a  small  case. 

But  Romola  no  sooner  saw  the  movement  than  she  looked 
at  him  with  significant  gravity,  and  placed  her  finger  on  her 
lips, 

"  Con  viso  clie  tacendo  dicea,  Taci." 

If  Bardo  were  made  aware  that  the  gems  were  within  reach, 
she  knew  well  he  would  want  a  minute  description  of  them, 
and  it  would  become  pain  to  him  that  they  should  go  away 
from  him,  even  if  he  did  not  insist  on  some  device  for  pur- 
chasing them  in  spite  of  poverty.  But  she  had  no  sooner 
made  this  sign  than  she  felt  rather  guilty  and  ashamed  at 
having  virtually  confessed  a  weakness  of  her  father's  to  a 


DAWNING  HOPES.  65 

stranger.  It  seemed  that  she  was  destined  to  a  s\idden  con- 
fidence and  familiarity  with  this  young  Greek,  strangely  at 
variance  with  her  deep-seated  pride  and  reserve  ;  and  this  con- 
sciousness again  brought  the  unwonted  color  to  her  cheeks. 

Tito  understood  her  look  and  sign,  and  immediately  with- 
drew his  hand  from  the  case,  saying,  in  a  careless  tone,  so  as 
to  make  it  appear  that  he  was  merely  following  up  his  last 
words,  "  But  they  are  usually  in  the  keeping  of  Messer  Domen- 
ico  Cennini,  who  has  strong  and  safe  places  for  these  things. 
He  estimates  them  as  worth  at  least  five  hundred  ducats." 

"  Ah,  then,  they  are  fine  intagli,"  said  Bardo.  "  Five  hun- 
dred ducats  !     Ah,  more  than  a  man's  ransom  !  " 

Tito  gave  a  slight,  almost  imperceptible  start,  and  opened 
his  long  dark  eyes  with  questioning  surprise  at  Bardo's  blind 
face,  as  if  his  words  —  a  mere  phrase  of  common  parlance,  at 
a  time  when  men  were  often  being  ransomed  from  slavery  or 
imprisonment  —  had  had  some  special  meaning  for  him.  But 
the  next  moment  he  looked  towards  Romola,  as  if  her  eyes 
must  be  her  father's  interpreters.  She,  intensely  pre-occupied 
with  what  related  to  her  father,  imagined  that  Tito  was  looking 
to  her  again  for  some  guidance,  and  immediately  spoke. 

"  Alessandra  Scala  delights  in  gems,  you  know,  father ;  she 
calls  them  her  winter  flowers ;  and  the  Segretario  would  be 
almost  sure  to  buy  any  gems  that  she  wished  fox-.  Besides,  he 
himself  sets  great  store  by  rings  and  sigils,  which  he  wears  as 
a  defence  against  pains  in  the  joints." 

"  It  is  true,"  said  Bardo.  "  Bartolommeo  has  overmuch  con- 
fidence in  the  efficacy  of  gems  —  a  confidence  wider  than  what 
is  sanctioned  by  Pliny,  who  clearly  shows  that  he  regards 
many  beliefs  of  that  sort  as  idle  superstitions ;  though  not  to 
the  utter  denial  of  medicinal  virtues  in  gems.  Wherefore,  I 
myself,  as  you  observe,  young  man,  wear  certain  rings,  which 
the  discreet  Camillo  Leonardi  prescribed  to  me  by  letter  when 
two  years  ago  I  had  a  certain  infirmity  of  sudden  numbness. 
But  thou  hast  spoken  well,  Komola.  I  will  dictate  a  letter  to 
Bartolommeo,  which  Maso  shall  carry.  But  it  were  well  that 
Messere  should  notify  to  thee  what  the  gems  are,  together 
with  the  intagli  they  bear,  as  a  warrant  to  Bartolommeo  that 
they  will  be  worthy  of  his  attention." 

"Nay,  father,"  said  Romola,  whose  dread  lest  a  paroxysm 
of  the  collector's  mania  should  seize  her  father,  gave  her  the 
courage  to  resist  his  proposal.  "  Your  word  will  be  sufiicient 
that  Messere  is  a  scholar  and  has  travelled  much.  The  Segre- 
tario will  need  no  further  inducement  to  receive  him." 


66  ROM  OLA. 

"  True,  child,"  said  Bardo,  touched  on  a  chord  that  was  sure 
to  respond.  "■  I  have  no  need  to  add  proofs  and  arguments  in 
confirmation  of  my  word  to  Bartolommeo.  And  I  doubt  not 
that  this  young  man's  presence  is  in  accord  with  the  tones  of 
his  voice,  so  that,  the  door  being  once  opened,  he  will  be  his 
own  best  advocate." 

Bardo  paused  a  few  moments,  but  his  silence  was  evidently 
charged  with  some  idea  that  he  was  hesitating  to  express,  for 
he  once  leaned  forward  a  little  as  if  he  were  going  to  speak, 
then  turned  his  head  aside  towards  Romola  and  sank  back- 
ward again.  At  last,  as  if  he  had  made  up  his  mind,  he  said 
in  a  tone  which  might  have  become  a  prince  giving  the  courte- 
ous signal  of  dismissal,  — 

"I  am  somewhat  fatigued  this  morning,  and  shall  prefer 
seeing  you  again  to-morrow,  when  I  shall  be  able  to  give  you 
the  secretary's  answer,  authorizing  you  to  present  yourself  to 
him  at  some  given  time.  But  before  you  go  "  —  here  the  old 
man,  in  spite  of  himself,  fell  into  a  more  faltering  tone  —  "you 
will  perhaps  permit  me  to  touch  your  hand  ?  It  is  long  since 
I  touched  the  hand  of  a  young  man." 

Bardo  had  stretched  out  his  aged  white  hand,  and  Tito 
immediately  placed  his  dark  but  delicate  and  supple  fingers 
within  it.  Bardo's  cramped  fingers  closed  over  them,  and  he 
held  them  for  a  few  minutes  in  silence.     Then  he  said,  — 

"  Romola,  has  this  young  man  the  same  complexion  as  thy 
brother  —  fair  and  pale  ?  " 

"No,  father,"  Romola  answered,  with  determined  composure, 
though  her  heart  began  to  beat  violently  with  mingled  emo- 
tions. "  The  hair  of  Messere  is  dark  —  his  complexion  is 
dark."  Inwardly  she  said,  "  Will  he  mind  it  ?  will  it  be  dis- 
agreeable ?  No,  he  looks  so  gentle  and  good-natured."  Then 
aloud  again,  — 

"  Would  Messere  permit  my  father  to  touch  his  hair  and 
face  ?  " 

Her  eyes  inevitably  made  a  timid  entreating  appeal  while 
she  asked  this,  and  Tito's  met  them  with  soft  brightness  as  he 
said,  "  Assuredly,"  and,  leaning  forward,  raised  Bardo's  hand 
to  his  curls,  with  a  readiness  of  assent,  which  was  the  greater 
relief  to  her,  because  it  was  unaccompanied  by  any  sign  of 
embarrassment. 

Bardo  passed  his  hand  again  and  again  over  the  long  curls 
and  grasped  them  a  little,  as  if  their  spiral  resistance  made  his 
inward  vision  clearer ;  then  he  passed  his  hand  over  the  brow 
and  cheek,  tracing  the  profile  with  tlie  edge  of  his  palm  and 


DAWNING  HOPES.  67 

fourth  finger,  and  letting  the  breadth  of  his  hand  repose  on 
the  rich  oval  of  the  cheek. 

"  Ah/'  he  said,  as  his  hand  glided  from  the  face  and  rested 
on  the  young  man's  shoulder.  "  He  must  be  very  unlike  thy 
brother,  Romola:  and  it  is  the  better.  You  see  no  visions,  I 
trust,  my  young  friend  ?  " 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened,  and  there  entered  unan- 
nounced, a  tall  elderly  man  in  a  handsome  black  silk  lucco, 
who,  unwinding  his  becchetto  from  his  neck  and  taking  off  his 
cap,  disclosed  a  head  as  white  as  Bardo's.  He  cast  a  keen 
glance  of  surprise  at  the  group  before  him  —  the  young 
stranger  leaning  in  that  filial  attitude,  while  Bardo's  hand 
rested  on  his  shoulder,  and  Romola  sitting  near  with  eyes 
dilated  by  anxiety  and  agitation.  But  there  was  an  instan- 
taneous change :  Bardo  let  fall  his  hand,  Tito  raised  himself 
from  his  stooping  posture,  and  Romola  rose  to  meet  the  visitor 
with  an  alacrity  which  implied  all  the  greater  intimacy,  because 
it  was  unaccompanied  by  any  smile. 

"  Well,  god-daughter,"  said  the  stately  man,  as  he  touched 
Romola's  shoulder;  "  Maso  said  you  had  a  visitor,  but  I  came 
in  nevertheless." 

"  It  is  thou,  Bernardo,"  said  Bardo.  "  Thou  art  come  at  a 
fortunate  moment.  This,  young  man,"  he  continued,  while 
Tito  rose  and  bowed,  "is  one  of  the  chief  citizens  of  Florence, 
Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero,  my  oldest,  I  had  almost  said  my 
only  friend  —  whose  good  opinion,  if  you  can  win  it,  may  carry 
you  far.  He  is  but  three  and  twenty,  Bernardo,  yet  he  can 
doubtless  tell  thee  much  which  thou  wilt  care  to  hear ;  for 
though  a  scholar,  he  has  already  travelled  far,  and  looked  on 
other  things  besides  the  manuscripts  for  which  thou  hast  too 
light  an  esteem." 

"  Ah,  a  Greek,  as  I  augur,"  said  Bernardo,  returning  Tito's 
reverence  but  slightly,  and  surveying  him  with  that  sort  of 
glance  which  seems  almost  to  cut  like  fine  steel.  ''  Newly 
arrived  in  Florence,  it  appears.  The  name  of  Messere  —  or 
part  of  it,  for  it  is  doubtless  a  long  one  ?  " 

"  On  the  contrary,"  said  Tito,  with  perfect  good-humor,  "  it 
is  most  modestly  free  from  polysyllabic  pomp.  My  name  is 
Tito  Melema." 

"Truly?"  said  Bernardo,  rather  scornfully,  as  he  took  a 
seat ;  "  I  had  expected  it  to  be  at  least  as  long  as  the  names 
of  a  city,  a  river,  a  province,  and  an  empire  all  put  together. 
We  Florentines  mostly  use  names  as  we  do  prawns,  and  strip 
thein  of  all  flourishes  before  we  trust  them  to  our  throats. 


68  ROMOLA. 

"  Well,  Bardo,"  he  continued,  as  if  the  stranger  were  not 
worth  further  notice,  and  changing  his  tone  of  sarcastic  suspi- 
cion for  one  of  sadness,  "  we  have  buried  him." 

"  Ah  !  "  replied  Bardo,  with  corresponding  sadness,  '•'  and  a 
new  epoch  has  come  for  Florence  —  a  dark  one,  I  fear. 
Lorenzo  has  left  behind  him  an  inheritance  that  is  but  like 
the  alchemist's  laboratory  when  the  wisdom  of  the  alchemist 
is  gone." 

"  Not  altogether  so,"  said  Bernardo.  "  Piero  de'  Medici  has 
abundant  intelligence;  his  faults  are  only  the  faults  of  hot 
blood.  I  love  the  lad  —  lad  he  will  always  be  to  me,  as  I  have 
always  been  'little  father'  to  him." 

"Yet  all  who  want  a  new  order  of  things  are  likely  to  con- 
ceive new  hopes,"  said  Bardo.  "  We  shall  have  the  old  strife 
of  parties,  I  fear." 

''  If  we  could  have  a  new  order  of  things  that  was  some- 
thing else  than  knocking  down  one  coat  of  arms  to  put  up 
another,"  said  Bernardo,  "  I  should  be  ready  to  say,  '  I  belong 
to  no  party  ;  I  am  a  Florentine.'  But  as  long  as  parties  are 
in  question,  I  am  a  Medicean,  and  will  be  a  Medicean  till  I 
die.  I  am  of  the  same  mind  as  Farinata  degli  Uberti :  if  any 
man  asks  me  what  is  meant  by  siding  with  a  party,  I  say,  as 
he  did,  '  To  wish  ill  or  well,  for  the  sake  of  past  wrongs  or  kind- 
nesses.' " 

During  this  short  dialogue,  Tito  had  been  standing,  and  now 
took  his  leave. 

"  But  come  again  at  the  same  hour  to-morrow,"  said  Bardo, 
graciously,  before  Tito  left  the  room,  "  that  I  may  give  you 
Bartolommeo's  answer." 

"  From  what  quarter  of  the  sky  has  this  pretty  Greek 
youngster  alighted  so  close  to  thy  chair,  Bardo  ? "  said 
Bernardo  del  Nero,  as  the  door  closed.  He  spoke  with  dry 
emphasis,  evidently  intended  to  convey  something  more  to 
Bardo  than  was  implied  by  the  mere  words. 

"  He  is  a  scholar  who  has  been  shipwrecked  and  has  saved 
a  few  gems,  for  which  he  wants  to  find  a  purchaser.  I  am 
going  to  send  him  to  Bartolommeo  Scala,  for  thou  knowest  it 
were  more  prudent  in  me  to  abstain  from  further  purchases." 

Bernardo  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  said,  "  Romola,  wilt 
thou  see  if  my  servant  is  without  ?  I  ordered  him  to  wait  for 
me  here."  Then,  when  Romola  was  at  a  sufficient  distance, 
he  leaned  forward  and  said  to  Bardo  in  a  low,  emphatic  tone,  — 

"  Remember,  Bardo,  thou  hast  a  rare  gem  of  thy  own ;  take 
care  no  one  gets  it  who  is  not  likely  to  pay  a  worthy  price. 


A   LEARNED  SQUABBLE.  69 

That  pretty  Greek  has  a  lithe  sleekness  about  him,  that  seems 
marvellously  fitted  for  slipping  easily  into  any  nest  he  fixes 
his  mind  on." 

Bardo  was  startled :  the  association  of  Tito  with  the  image 
of  his  lost  son  had  excluded  instead  of  suggesting  the  thought 
of  Romola.  But  almost  immediately  there  seemed  to  be  a 
re-action  which  made  him  grasp  the  warning  as  if  it  had  been 
a  hope. 

"  But  why  not,  Bernardo  ?  If  the  young  man  approved  him- 
self worthy  —  he  is  a  scholar  —  and  —  and  there  would  be  no 
difficulty  about  the  dowry,  which  always  makes  thee  gloomy." 


CHAPTER  VII. 

A    LEARNED    SQUABBLE. 

Bartolommeo  Scala,  secretary  of  the  Florentine  Republic, 
on  whom  Tito  Melema  had  been  thus  led  to  anchor  his  hopes, 
lived  in  a  handsome  palace  close  to  the  Porta  Pinti,  now 
known  as  the  Casa  Gherardesca.  His  arms  —  an  azure  ladder 
transverse  on  a  golden  field,  with  the  motto  Gradatim  placed 
over  the  entrance  —  told  all  comers  that  the  miller's  son  held 
his  ascent  to  honors  by  his  own  efforts  a  fact  to  be  proclaimed 
without  wincing.  The  secretary  was  a  vain  and  pompous 
man,  but  he  was  also  an  honest  one :  he  was  sincerely  con- 
vinced of  his  own  merit,  and  could  see  no  reason  for  feigning. 
The  topmost  round  of  his  azure  ladder  had  been  reached  by 
this  time  :  he  had  held  his  secretaryship  these  twenty  years 
—  had  long  since  made  his  orations  on  the  ringhiera,  or  plat- 
form of  the  Old  Palace,  as  the  custom  was,  in  the  presence  of 
princely  visitors,  while  Marzocco,  the  republican  lion,  wore  his 
gold  crown  on  the  occasion,  and  all  the  people  cried,  "  Viva 
Messer  Bartolommeo  !  "  —  had  been  on  an  embassy  to  Rome, 
and  had  there  been  made  titular  Senator,  Apostolical  Secretary, 
Knight  of  the  Golden  Spur ;  and  had,  eight  years  ago,  been 
Gonfaloniere — last  goal  of  the  Florentine  citizen's  ambition. 
Meantime  he  had  got  richer  and  richer,  and  more  and  more 
gouty,  after  the  manner  of  successful  mortality ;  and  the 
Knight  of  the  Golden  Spur  had  often  to  sit  with  helpless 
cushioned  heel  under  the   handsome  loggia  he   had   built  for 


70  ROMOLA. 

himself  overlooking  the  spacious  gardens  and  lawn  at  the  back 
of  his  palace. 

He  was  in  this  position  on  the  day  when  he  had  granted  the 
desired  interview  to  Tito  Melema.  The  May  afternoon  sun  was 
on  the  flowers  and  the  grass  beyond  the  pleasant  shade  of  the 
loggia ;  the  too  stately  silk  lucco  was  cast  aside,  and  the  light 
loose  mantle  was  thrown  over  his  tunic  ;  his  beautiful  daugh- 
ter, Alessandra,  and  her  husband,  the  Greek  soldier-poet 
Marullo,  were  seated  on  one  side  of  him:  on  the  other,  two 
friends  not  oppressively  illustrious,  and  therefore  the  better 
listeners.  Yet,  to  say  nothing  of  the  gout,  Messer  Bartolom- 
meo's  felicity  was  far  from  perfect :  it  was  embittered  by  the 
contents  of  certain  papers  that  lay  before  him,  consisting 
chiefly  of  a  correspondence  between  himself  and  Politian.  It 
was  a  human  foible  at  that  period  (incredible  as  it  may  seem) 
to  recite  quarrels,  and  favor  scholarly  visitors  with  the  com- 
munication of  an  entire  and  lengthy  correspondence  ;  and  this 
was  neither  the  first  nor  the  second  time  that  Scala  had  asked 
the  candid  opinion  of  his  friends  as  to  the  balance  of  right 
and  wrong  in  some  half-score  Latin  letters  between  himself 
and  Politian,  all  springing  out  of  certain  epigrams  written  in 
the  most  playful  tone  in  the  world.  It  was  the  story  of  a 
very  typical  and  pretty  quarrel,  in  which  we  are  interested, 
because  it  supplied  precisely  that  thistle  of  hatred  necessary, 
according  to  Nello,  as  a  stimulus  to  the  sluggish  paces  of  the 
cautious  steed.  Friendship. 

Politian,  having  been  a  rejected  pretender  to  the  love  and 
the  hand  of  Scala's  daughter,  kept  a  very  sharp  and  learned 
tooth  in  readiness  against  the  too  prosperous  and  presumptu- 
ous secretary,  who  had  declined  the  greatest  scholar  of  the 
age  for  a  son-in-law.  Scala  was  a  meritorious  public  servant, 
and,  moreover,  a  lucky  man  —  naturally  exasperating  to  an 
offended  scholar  ;  but  then  —  0  beautiful  balance  of  things  I 
—  he  had  an  itch  for  authorship,  and  was  a  bad  writer  —  one 
of  those  excellent  people  who,  sitting  in  gouty  slippers, 
"penned  poetical  trifles"  entirely  for  their  own  amusement, 
without  any  view  to  an  audience,  and,  consequently,  sent  them 
to  their  friends  in  letters,  which  were  the  literary  periodicals 
of  the  fifteenth  century.  Now  Scala  had  abundance  of  friends 
who  were  ready  to  ])raise  his  writings  :  friends  like  Ficino  and 
Landino  —  amiable  browsers  in  the  Medicean  park  along  with 
himself  —  who  found  his  Latin  prose  style  elegant  and  mascu- 
line ;  and  the  terrible  Joseph  Scaliger,  who  was  to  pronounce 
him  totally  ignorant  of  Latinity,  was  at  a  comfortable  dis- 


A   LEARNED  SQUABBLE.  71 

tance  in  the  next  century.  But  when  was  the  fatal  coquetry 
inherent  in  superfluous  authorship  ever  quite  contented  with 
the  ready  praise  of  friends  ?  That  critical  supercilious  Poli- 
tian  —  a  fellow-browser,  who  was  far  from  amiable  —  must  be 
made  aware  that  the  solid  secretary  showed,  in  his  leisure 
hours,  a  pleasant  fertility  in  verses,  which  indicated  pretty 
clearly  how  much  he  might  do  in  that  way  if  he  were  not  a 
man  of  affairs. 

Ineffable  moment !  when  the  man  you  secretly  hate  sends 
you  a  Latin  epigram  with  a  false  gender  —  hendecasyllables 
with  a  questionable  elision,  at  least  a  toe  too  much  —  attempts 
at  poetic  figures  which  are  manifest  solecisms.  That  moment 
had  come  to  Politian  :  the  secretary  had  put  forth  his  soft  head 
from  the  official  shell,  and  the  terrible  lurking  crab  was  down 
upon  him.  Politian  had  used  the  freedom  of  a  friend,  and  pleas- 
antly, in  the  form  of  a  Latin  epigram,  corrected  the  mistake  of 
Scala  in  making  the  culex  (an  insect  too  well  known  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ai'uo)  of  the  inferior  or  feminine  gender.  Scala 
replied  by  a  bad  joke,  in  suitable  Latin  verses,  referring  to 
Politian's  unsuccessful  suit.  Better  and  better.  Politian  found 
the  verses  very  pretty  and  highly  facetious  :  the  more  was  the 
pity  that  they  were  seriously  incorrect,  and  inasmuch  as  Scala 
had  alleged  that  he  had  written  them  in  imitation  of  a  Greek 
epigram,  Politian,  being  on  such  friendly  terms,  would  enclose 
a  Greek  epigram  of  his  own,  on  the  same  interesting  insect  — 
not,  we  may  presume,  out  of  any  wish  to  humble  Scala,  but 
rather  to  instruct  him ;  said  epigram  containing  a  lively  conceit 
about  Venus,  Cupid,  and  the  culex,  of  a  kind  much  tasted  at 
that  period,  founded  partly  on  the  zoological  fact  that  the  gnat, 
like  Venus,  was  born  from  the  waters.  Scala,  in  reply,  begged 
to  say  that  his  verses  were  never  intended  for  a  scholar  with 
such  delicate  olfactories  as  Politian,  nearest  of  all  living  men 
to  the  perfection  of  the  ancients,  and  of  a  taste  so  fastidious 
that  sturgeon  itself  must  seem  insipid  to  him ;  defended  his 
own  verses,  nevertheless,  though  indeed  they  were  written 
hastily,  without  correction,  and  intended  as  an  agreeable  dis- 
traction during  the  summer  heat  to  himself  and  such  friends 
as  were  satisfied  with  mediocrity,  he,  Scala,  not  being  like 
some  other  people,  who  courted  publicity  through  the  book- 
sellers. For  the  rest,  he  had  barely  enough  Greek  to  make 
out  the  sense  of  the  epigram  so  graciously  sent  him,  to  say 
nothing  of  tasting  its  elegances ;  but  —  the  epigram  was 
Politian's  :  what  more  need  be  said  ?  Still,  by  way  of  post- 
script, he  feared  that  his  incomparable  friend's  comparison  of 


72  ROMOLA. 

the  gnat  to  Venus,  on  account  of  its  origin  from  the  waters, 
was  in  many  ways  ticklish.  On  the  one  hand,  Venus  might 
be  offended ;  and  on  the  other,  unless  the  poet  intended  an 
allusion  to  the  doctrine  of  Thales,  that  cold  and  damp  origin 
seemed  doubtful  to  Scala  in  the  case  of  a  creature  so  fond 
of  warmth  ;  a  fish  were  perhaps  the  better  comparison,  or, 
when  the  power  of  flying  was  in  question,  an  eagle,  or  indeed, 
when  the  darkness  was  taken  into  consideration,  a  bat  or  an 
owl  were  a  less  obscure  and  more  apposite  parallel,  etc. 
Here  was  a  great  opportunity  for  Politian.  He  was  not 
aware,  he  wrote,  that  when  he  had  Scala's  verses  placed  before 
him,  there  was  any  question  of  sturgeon,  but  rather  of  frogs 
and  gudgeons :  made  short  work  with  Scala's  defence  of  his 
own  Latin,  and  mangled  him  terribly  on  the  score  of  the 
stupid  criticisms  he  had  ventured  on  the  Greek  epigram 
kindly  forwarded  to  him  as  a  model.  Wretched  cavils, 
indeed !  for  as  to  the  damp  origin  of  the  gnat,  there  was  the 
authority  of  Virgil  himself,  who  had  called  it  the  "  alumnus 
of  the  waters ;  "  and  as  to  what  his  dear  dull  friend  had  to  say 
about  the  lish,  the  eagle,  and  the  rest,  it  was  "  nihil  ad  rem ; " 
for  because  the  eagle  could  fly  higher,  it  by  no  means  followed 
that  the  gnat  could  not  fly  at  all,  etc.  He  was  ashamed, 
however,  to  dwell  on  such  trivialities,  and  thus  to  swell  a 
gnat  into  an  elephant ;  but,  for  his  own  part  would  only  add 
that  he  had  nothing  deceitful  or  double  about  him,  neither 
was  he  to  be  caught  when  present  by  the  false  blandishments 
of  those  who  slandered  him  in  his  absence,  agreeing  rather 
with  a  Homeric  sentiment  on  that  head  —  which  furnished  a 
Greek  quotation  to  serve  as  powder  to  his  bullet. 

The  quarrel  could  not  end  there.  The  logic  could  hardlj/ 
get  worse,  but  the  secretary  got  more  pompously  self-asserting, 
and  the  scholarly  poet's  temper  more  and  more  venomous 
Politian  had  been  generously  willing  to  hold  up  a  mirror,  h-^ 
which  the  too-inflated  secretary,  beholding  his  own  likeness, 
might  be  induced  to  cease  setting  up  his  ignorant  defences  of 
bad  Latin  against  ancient  authorities  whom  the  consent  of 
centuries  had  placed  beyond  question,  —  unless,  indeed,  hf 
had  designed  to  sink  in  literature  in  proportion  as  he  rose  in 
honors,  that  by  a  sort  of  compensation  men  of  letters  might 
feel  themselves  his  equals.  In  return,  Politian  was  begged  to 
examine  Scala's  writings :  nowhere  would  he  find  a  more 
devout  admiration  of  antiquity.  The  secretary  was  ashamed 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  blushed  for  it.  Some, 
indeed,    there    were   who  wanted   to   have   their   own  works 


A  LEARNED  SQUABBLE.  73 

praised  and  exalted  to  a  level  with  the  divine  monuments  of 
antiquity ;  but  he,  Scala,  could  not  oblige  them.  And  as  to 
the  honors  wliich  were  offensive  to  the  envious,  they  had  been 
well  earned  :  witness  his  whole  life  since  he  came  in  penury 
to  Florence.  The  elegant  scholar,  in  reply,  was  not  surprised 
that  Scala  found  the  Age  distasteful  to  him,  since  he  himself 
was  so  distasteful  to  the  Age  ;  nay,  it  was  with  perfect  ac- 
curacy that  he,  the  elegant  scholar,  had  called  Scala  a  branny 
monster,  inasmuch  as  he  was  formed  from  the  offscourings  of 
monsters,  born  amidst  the  refuse  of  a  mill,  and  eminently 
worthy  the  long-eared  office  of  turning  the  paternal  mill- 
stones (in  pistrini  sordibiis  natus  et  quidem  pistrino  dignis- 
sbmis)  ! 

It  was  not  without  reference  to  Tito's  appointed  visit  that 
the  papers  containing  this  correspondence  were  brought  out 
to-day.  Here  was  a  new  Greek  scholar  whose  accomplish- 
ments were  to  be  tested,  and  on  nothing  did  Scala  more 
desire  a  dispassionate  opinion  from  persons  of  superior  knowl- 
edge than  on  that  Greek  epigram  of  Politian's.  After  suffi- 
cient introductory  talk  concerning  Tito's  travels,  after  a  sur- 
ve}^  and  discussion  of  tlie  gems,  and  an  easy  passage  from  the 
mention  of  the  lamented  Lorenzo's  eagerness  in  collecting 
such  specimens  of  ancient  art  to  the  subject  of  classical 
tastes  and  studies  in  general  and  their  present  condition  in 
Florence,  it  was  inevitable  to  mention  Politian.  a  man  of  emi- 
nent ability,  indeed,  but  a  little  too  arrogant' — assuming  to 
be  a  Hercules,  whose  office  it  was  to  destroy  all  the  literary 
monstrosities  of  the  age,  and  writing  letters  to  his  elders 
without  signing  them,  as  if  they  were  miraculou.s  revelations 
that  could  only  have  one  source.  And  after  all.  were  not  his 
own  criticisms  often  questionable  and  his  tastes  perverse  ? 
He  was  fond  of  saying  pungent  things  about  the  men  who 
thought  they  wrote  like  Cicero  because  they  ended  every 
sentence  with  "  esse  videtnr  :  "  but  while  he  was  boasting  of 
his  freedom  from  servile  imitation,  did  he  not  fall  into  the 
other  extreme,  running  after  strange  words  and  affected 
phrases  ?  Even  in  his  much-belauded  "  Miscellanea "  was 
every  point  tenable  ?  And  Tito,  who  had  just  been  looking 
into  the  "  Miscellanea,"  found  so  much  to  say  that  was  agree^ 
able  to  the  secretary  —  he  would  have  done  so  from  the  mere 
disposition  to  please,  without  further  motive  —  that  he  showed 
himself  quite  worthy  to  be  made  a  judge  in  the  notable  cor- 
respondence concerning  the  culex.  Here  was  the  Greek 
epigram  which  Politian  had  doubtless  thought  the  finest  in 


74  ROMOLA. 

the  world,  though  he  had  pretended  to  believe  that  the 
"  transmarini,"  the  Greeks  themselves,  Avould  make  light  of 
it;  had  he  not  been  unintentionally  speaking  the  truth  in 
his  false  modesty  ? 

Tito  was  ready,  and  scarified  the  epigram  to  Scala's  con- 
tent. 0  wise  young  judge  !  He  could  doubtless  appreciate 
satire  even  in  the  vulgar  tongue,  and  Scala  —  who,  excellent 
man,  not  seeking  publicity  through  the  booksellers,  was 
never  unprovided  with  "  hasty  uncorrected  trifles,"  as  a  sort 
of  sherbet  for  a  visitor  on  a  hot  day,  or,  if  the  v/eather  were 
cold,  why  then  as  a  cordial  — had  a  few  little  matters  in  the 
shape  of  Sonnets,  turning  on  well-known  foibles  of  Politian's, 
which  he  would  not  like  to  go  any  farther,  but  which  would, 
perhaps,  amuse  the  company. 

Enough  :  Tito  took  his  leave  under  an  urgent  invitation  to 
come  again.  His  gems  were  interesting;  especially  the  agate, 
with  the  Insus  nafnrce  in  it  —  a  most  wonderful  semblance  of 
Cupid  riding  on  the  lion ;  and  the  "  Jew's  stone,"  with  the 
lion-headed  serpent  enchased  in  it ;  both  of  which  the  secre- 
tary agreed  to  buy  —  the  latter  as  a  re-enforcement  of  his 
preventives  against  the  gout,  which  gave  him  such  severe 
twinges  that  it  was  plain  enough  how  intolerable  it  would  be 
if  he  were  not  well  supplied  with  rings  of  rare  virtue,  and 
with  an  amulet  worn  close  under  the  right  breast.  But  Tito 
was  assured  that  he  himself  was  more  interesting  than  his 
gems.  He  had  won  his  way  to  the  Scala  Palace  by  the 
recommendation  of  Bardo  de'  Bardi,  who,  to  be  sure,  was 
Scala's  old  acquaintance  and  a  worthy  scholar,  in  spite  of  his 
overvaluing  himself  a  little  (a  frequent  foible  in  the  secre- 
tary's friends)  ;  but  he  must  come  again  on  the  ground  of  his 
own  manifest  accomplishments. 

The  interview  could  hardly  have  ended  more  auspiciously 
for  Tito,  and  as  he  walked  out  at  the  Porta  Pinti  that  he 
might  laugh  a  little  at  his  ease  over  the  affair  of  the  culex, 
he  felt  that  fortune  could  hardly  mean  to  turn  her  back  on 
him  again  at  present,  since  she  had  taken  him  by  the  hand  in 
this  decided  way. 


A   FACE  IN   THE   CROWD.  76 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

A    FACE   IN    THE    CROWD. 

It  is  easy  to  northern  people  to  rise  early  on  midsummer 
morning,  to  see  the  dew  on  the  grassy  edge  of  the  dusty 
pathway,  to  notice  the  fresh  shoots  among  the  darker  green  of 
the  oak  and  fir  in  the  coppice,  and  to  look  over  the  gate  at  the 
shorn  meadow,  without  recollecting  that  it  is  the  Nativity  of 
St.  John  the  Baptist. 

Not  so  to  the  Florentine  —  still  less  to  the  Florentine  of  the 
fifteenth  century :  to  him  on  that  particular  morning  the 
brightness  of  the  eastern  sun  on  the  Arno  had  something 
special  in  it;  the  ringing  of  the  bells  was  articulate,  and 
declared  it  to  be  the  great  summer  festival  of  Florence,  the 
day  of  San  Giovanni. 

San  Giovanni  had  been  the  patron  saint  of  Florence  for  at 
least  eight  hundred  years  —  ever  since  the  time  when  the 
Lombard  Queen  Theodolinda  had  commanded  her  subjects  to 
do  him  peculiar  honor ;  nay,  says  old  Villani,  to  the  best  of 
his  knowledge,  ever  since  the  days  of  Constantine  the  Great 
and  Pope  Sylvester,  when  the  Florentines  deposed  their  idol 
Mars,  whom  they  were  nevertheless  careful  not  to  treat  with 
contumely  ;  for  while  they  consecrated  their  beautiful  and 
noble  temple  to  the  honor  of  God  and  of  the  "  Beato  Messere 
Santo  Giovanni,"  they  placed  old  Mars  respectfully  on  a  high 
tower  near  the  River  Arno,  finding  in  certain  ancient 
memorials  that  he  had  been  elected  as  their  tutelar  deity 
under  such  astral  influences  that  if  he  were  broken,  or  other- 
wise treated  with  indignity,  the  city  would  suffer  great  damage 
and  mutation.  But  in  the  fifteenth  century  that  discreet 
regard  to  the  feelings  of  the  Man-destroyer  had  long  vanished  : 
the  god  of  the  spear  and  shield  had  ceased  to  frown  by  the 
side  of  the  Arno,  and  the  defences  of  the  Republic  were  held 
to  lie  in  its  craft  and  its  coffers.  For  spear  and  shield  could 
be  hired  by  gold  florins,  and  on  the  gold  florins  there  had 
always  been  the  image  of  San  Giovanni. 

Much  good  had  come  to  Florence  since  the  dim  time  of 
struggle  between  the  old  patron  and  the  new  :  some  quarrelling 


76  ROMOLA. 

and  bloodshed,  doubtless,  between  Guelf  and  GhibelHne, 
between  Black  and  White,  between  orthodox  sons  of  the 
Church  and  heretic  Paterini ;  some  floods,  famine,  and  pesti- 
lence ;  but  still  much  wealth  and  glory.  Florence  had 
achieved  conquests  over  walled  cities  once  mightier  than  itself, 
and  especially  over  hated  Pisa,  whose  marble  buildings  were 
too  high  and  beautiful,  whose  masts  were  too  much  honored 
on  Greek  and  Italian  coasts.  The  name  of  Florence  had  been 
growing  prouder  and  prouder  in  all  the  courts  of  Europe,  na^^ 
in  Africa  itself,  on  the  strength  of  purest  gold  coinage,  finest 
dyes  and  textures,  pre-eminent  scholarship  and  poetic  genius, 
and  wits  of  the  most  serviceable  sort  for  statesmanship  and 
banking:  it  was  a  name  so  omnipresent  that  a  Pope  with  a 
turn  for  epigram  had  called  Florentines  " the  fifth  element." 
And  for  this  high  destiny,  though  it  might  partly  depend  on 
the  stars  and  Madonna  dell'  Impruneta,  and  certainly  depended 
on  other  higher  Powers  less  often  named,  the  praise  was 
greatly  due  to  San  Giovanni,  whose  image  was  on  the  fair 
gold  florins. 

Therefore  it  was  fitting  that  the  day  of  San  Giovanni  — 
that  ancient  Church  festival  already  venerable  in  the  days  of 
St.  Augustine  —  should  be  a  day  of  peculiar  rejoicing  to 
Florence,  and  should  be  ushered  in  by  a  vigil  duly  kept  in 
strict  old  Florentine  fashion,  with  much  dancing,  with  much 
street  jesting,  and  perhaps  with  not  a  little  stone-throwing 
and  window-breaking,  but  emphatically  with  certain  street 
sights  such  as  could  only  be  provided  by  a  city  which  held  in 
its  service  a  clever  Cecca,  engineer  and  architect,  valuable 
alike  in  sieges  and  in  shows.  By  the  help  of  Cecca,  the  very 
saints,  surrounded  with  their  almond-shaped  glory,  and  floating 
on  clouds  with  their  joyous  companionship  of  winged  cherubs, 
even  as  they  may  be  seen  to  this  day  in  the  pictures  of  Peru- 
gino,  seemed,  on  the  eve  of  San  Giovanni,  to  have  brought 
their  piece  of  the  heavens  down  into  the  narrow  streets,  and  to 
pass  slowly  through  them ;  and,  more  wonderful  still,  saints 
of  gigantic  size,  with  attendant  angels,  might  be  seen,  not 
seated,  but  moving  in  a  slow  mysterious  manner  along  the 
streets,  like  a  procession  of  colossal  figures  come  down  from 
the  high  domes  and  tribunes  of  the  churches.  The  clouds 
were  made  of  good  woven  stuff,  the  saints  and  cherubs  were 
unglorified  mortals  supported  by  firm  bars,  and  those  mysteri- 
ous giants  were  really  men  of  very  steady  brain,  balancing 
themselves  on  stilts,  and  enlarged,  like  Greek  tragedians,  by 
huge  masks   and  stuffed  shoulders ;  but  he  was  a  miserably 


A   FACE  IN  THE   CROWD.  77 

unimaginative  Florentine  who  thought  only  of  that  —  nay, 
somewhat  impious,  for  in  the  images  of  sacred  things  was 
there  not  some  of  the  virtue  of  sacred  things  themselves  ? 
And  if,  after  that,  there  came  a  company  of  merry  black 
demons  well  armed  with  claws  and  thongs,  and  other  imple- 
ments of  sport,  ready  to  perform  impromptu  farces  of 
bastinadoing  and  clothes-tearing,  why,  that  was  the  demons' 
way  of  keeping  a  vigil,  and  they,  too,  might  have  descended 
from  the  domes  and  the  tribunes.  The  Tuscan  mind  slipped 
from  the  devout  to  the  burlesque,  as  readily  as  water  round 
an  angle  ;  and  the  saints  had  already  had  their  turn,  had  gone 
their  way,  and  made  their  due  pause  before  the  gates  of  San 
Giovanni,  to  do  him  honor  on  the  eve  of  his  festa.  And  on 
the  morrow,  the  great  day  thus  ushered  in,  it  was  fitting  that 
the  tributary  symbols  paid  to  Florence  by  all  its  dependent 
cities,  districts,  and  villages,  whether  conquered,  protected,  or 
of  immemorial  possession,  should  be  offered  at  the  shrine  of 
San  Giovanni  in  the  old  octagonal  church,  once  the  cathedral, 
and  now  the  baptistery,  where  every  Florentine  had  had  the 
sign  of  the  Cross  made  with  the  anointing  chrism  on  his 
brow ;  that  all  the  city,  from  the  white-haired  man  to  the 
stripling,  and  from  the  matron  to  the  lisping  child,  should  be 
clothed  in  its  best  to  do  honor  to  the  great  day,  and  see  the 
great  sight ;  and  that  again,  when  the  sun  was  sloping  and 
the  streets  were  cool,  there  should  be  the  glorious  race  or 
Corso,  when  the  unsaddled  horses,  clothed  in  rich  trappings, 
should  run  right  across  the  city,  from  the  Porta  al  Prato  on 
the  northwest,  through  the  Mercato  Vecchio,  to  the  Porta 
Santa  Croce  on  the  southeast,  where  the  richest  of  Palli,  or 
velvet  and  brocade  banners  with  silk  linings  and  fringe  of 
gold,  such  as  became  a  city  that  half-clothed  the  well-dressed 
world,  were  mounted  on  a  triumphal  car  awaiting  the  winner 
or  winner's  owner. 

And  thereafter  followed  more  dancing ;  nay,  through  the 
whole  day,  says  an  old  chronicler  at  the  beginning  of  that 
century,  there  were  weddings  and  the  grandest  gatherings, 
with  so  much  piping,  music  and  song,  with  balls  and  feasts 
and  gladness  and  ornament,  that  this  earth  might  have  been 
mistaken  for  Paradise ! 

In  this  year  of  1492,  it  was,  perhaps,  a  little  less  easy  to 
make  that  mistake.  Lorenzo  the  magnificent  and  subtle  was 
dead,  and  an  arrogant,  incautious  Piero  was  come  in  his  room, 
an  evil  change  for  Florence,  unless,  indeed,  the  wise  horse 
prefers  the  bad  rider,  as  more  easily  thrown  from  the  saddle,* 


78  ROMOLA. 

and  already  the  regrets  for  Lorenzo  were  getting  less  predomi- 
nant over  the  murmured  desire  for  government  on  a  broader 
basis,  in  which  corruption  miglit  be  arrested,  and  there  might 
be  that  free  play  for  everybody's  jealousy  and  ambition, 
which  made  the  ideal  liberty  of  the  good  old  quarrelsome, 
struggling  times,  when  Florence  raised  her  great  buildings, 
reared  her  own  soldiers,  drove  out  would-be  tyrants  at  the 
sword's  point,  and  was  proud  to  keep  faith  at  her  own  loss. 
Lorenzo  was  dead,  Pope  Innocent  was  dying,  and  a  trouble- 
some Neapolitan  succession,  with  an  intriguing,  ambitious 
Milan,  might  set  Italy  by  the  ears  before  long :  the  times 
were  likely  to  be  difficult.  Still,  there  was  all  the  more 
reason  that  the  Republic  should  keep  its  religious  festivals. 

And  midsummer  morning,  in  this  year  1492,  was  not  less 
bright  than  usual.  It  was  betimes  in  the  morning  that  the 
symbolic  offerings  to  be  carried  in  grand  procession  were 
all  assembled  at  their  starting-point  in  the  Piazza  della 
Signoria  —  that  famous  piazza,  where  stood  then,  and  stand 
now,  the  massive  turreted  Palace  of  the  People,  called  the 
Palazzo  Vecchio,  and  the  spacious  Loggia,  built  by  Orcagna  — 
the  scene  of  all  grand  State  ceremonial.  The  sky  made  the 
fairest  blue  tent,  and  under  it  the  bells  swung  so  vigorously 
that  every  evil  spirit  with  sense  enough  to  be  formidable, 
must  long  since  have  taken  his  flight ;  windows  and  terraced 
roofs  were  alive  with  human  faces  ;  sombre  stone  houses  were 
bright  with  hanging  draperies ;  the  boldly  soaring  palace 
tower,  the  yet  older  square  tower  of  the  Bargello,  and  the 
spire  of  the  neighboring  Badia,  seemed  to  keep  watch  above  ; 
and  below,  on  the  broad  polygonal  flags  of  the  piazza,  was  the 
glorious  show  of  banners,  and  horses  with  rich  trappings,  and 
gigantic  ceri,  or  tapers,  that  were  fitly  called  towers  — 
strangely  aggrandized  descendants  of  those  torches  by  whose 
faint  light  the  Church  Avorshipped  in  the  Catacombs. 
Betimes  in  the  morning  all  processions  had  need  to  move 
under  the  midsummer  sky  of  Florence,  where  the  shelter  of 
the  narrow  streets  must  every  now  and  then  be  exchanged  for 
the  glare  of  wide  spaces ;  and  the  sun  would  be  high  up  in 
the  heavens  before  the  long  pomp  had  ended  its  pilgrimage 
in  the  Piazza  di  San  Giovanni. 

But  here,  where  the  procession  was  to  pause,  the  magnifi- 
cent city,  with  its  ingenious  Cecca,  had  provided  another  tent 
than  the  sky  ;  for  the  whole  of  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  from 
the  octagonal  baptistery  in  the  centre  to  the  fa(;.ade  of  the 
cathedral  and  the  walls  of  the  houses  on  the  other  sides  of  the 


A   FACE  IN  THE   CROWD.  79 

quadrangle,  was  covered,  at  the  height  of  forty  feet  or  more, 
with  blue  drapery,  adorned  with  well-stitched  yellow  lilies 
and  the  familiar  coats  of  arms,  while  sheaves  of  many-colored 
banners  drooped  at  fit  angles  under  this  superincumbent  blue 

—  a  gorgeous  rainbow-lit  shelter  to  the  waiting  spectators  who 
leaned  from  the  windows,  and  made  a  narrow  border  on  the 
pavement,  and  wished  for  the  coming  of  the  show. 

One  of  these  spectators  was  Tito  Melema.  Bright,  in  the 
midst  of  brightness,  he  sat  at  the  window  of  the  room  above 
Nello's  shop,  his  right  elbow  resting  on  the  red  drapery  hang> 
ing  from  the  window-sill,  and  his  head  supported  in  a  back- 
ward position  by  the  right  hand,  which  pressed  the  curl? 
against  his  ear.  His  face  wore  that  bland  liveliness,  as  far 
removed  from  excitability  as  from  heaviness  or  gloom,  whict 
marks  the  companion  popular  alike  amongst  men  and  women 

—  the  companion  who  is  never  obtrusive  or  noisy  from  unease 
vanity  or  excessive  animal  spirits,  and  whose  brow  is  never 
contracted  by  resentment  or  indignation.  He  showed  no 
other  change  from  the  two  months  and  more  that  had  passed 
since  his  first  appearance  in  the  weather-stained  tunic  and 
hose,  than  that  added  radiance  of  good  fortune,  which  is  like 
the  just  perceptible  perfecting  of  a  flower  after  it  has  drunk 
a  morning's  sunbeams.  Close  behind  him,  ensconced  in  the 
narrow  angle  between  his  chair  and  the  window-frame,  stood 
the  slim  figure  of  ISTello  in  holiday  suit,  and  at  his  left  the 
younger  Cennini  —  Pietro,  the  erudite  corrector  of  proof- 
sheets,  not  Domenico  the  practical.  Tito  was  looking  alter- 
nately down  on  the  scene  below,  and  upward  at  the  varied 
knot  of  gazers  and  talkers  immediately  around  him,  some  of 
whom  had  come  in  after  witnessing  the  commencement  of  the 
procession  in  the  Piazza  della  Signoria.  Piero  di  Cosimo  was 
raising  a  laugh  among  them  by  his  grimaces  and  anathemas  at 
the  noise  of  the  bells,  against  which  no  kind  of  ear-stuffing 
was  a  sufficient  barricade,  since  the  more  he  stuffed  his  ears 
the  more  he  felt  the  vibration  of  his  skull ;  and  declaring 
that  he  would  bury  himself  in  the  most  solitary  spot  of  the 
Valdarno  on  afesta,  if  he  were  not  condemned,  as  a  painter, 
to  lie  in  wait  for  the  secrets  of  color  that  were  sometimes  to 
be  caught  from  the  floating  of  banners  and  the  chance  group- 
ing of  the  multitude. 

Tito  had  just  turned  his  laughing  face  away  from  the 
whimsical  painter  to  look  down  at  the  small  drama  going  on 
among  the  checkered  border  of  spectators,  when  at  the  angle 
of  the  marble  steps  in  front  of  the  Duomo,  nearly  opposite 


80  ROM  OLA. 

Nello's  shop,  he  saw  a  man's  face  upturned  towards  him,  and 
fixing  on  him  a  gaze  that  seemed  to  have  more  meaning  in  it 
than  the  ordinary  passing  observation  of  a  stranger.  It  was 
a  face  with  tonsured  head,  that  rose  above  the  black  mantle 
and  white  tunic  of  a  Dominican  friar  —  a  very  common  sight 
in  Florence ;  but  the  glance  had  something  peculiar  in  it  for 
Tito.  There  was  a  faint  suggestion  in  it,  certainly  not  of  an 
unpleasant  kind.  Yet  what  pleasant  association  had  he  ever 
had  with  monks  ?  None.  The  glance  and  the  suggestion 
hardly  took  longer  than  a  flash  of  lightning. 

"  Nello !  "  said  Tito,  hastily,  but  immediately  added  in  a 
tone  of  disappointment,  "  Ah,  he  has  turned  round.  It  was 
that  tall,  thin  friar  who  is  going  up  the  steps.  I  wanted  you 
to  tell  me  if  you  knew  aught  of  him  ?  " 

"One  of  the  Frati  Predicatori,"  said  Nello,  carelessly; 
"you  don't  expect  me  to  know  the  private  history  of  the 
crows." 

'•'  I  seem  to  remember  something  about  his  face,"  said  Tito. 
"  It  is  an  uncommon  face." 

"  What  ?  you  thought  it  might  be  our  Fra  Girolamo  ?  Too 
tall ;  and  he  never  shows  himself  in  that  chance  way." 

"  Besides,  that  loud-barking  '■  hound  of  the  Lord '  ^  is  not  in 
Florence  just  now,"  said  Francesco  Cei,  the  popular  poet ;  "  he 
has  taken  Piero  de'  Medici's  hint,  to  carry  his  railing  prophe- 
cies on  a  journey  for  a  while." 

"  The  Frate  neither  rails  nor  prophesies  against  any  man," 
said  a  middle-aged  personage  seated  at  the  other  corner  of  the 
window ;  "  he  only  prophesies  against  vice.  If  you  think 
that  an  attack  on  your  poems,  Francesco,  it  is  not  the  Prate's 
fault." 

"Ah,  he's  gone  into  the  Duomo  now,"  said  Tito,  who  had 
watched  the  figure  eagerly.  "  No,  I  was  not  under  that  mis- 
take, Nello.  Your  Fra  Girolamo  has  a  high  nose  and  a  large 
under-lip.  I  saw  him  once  —  he  is  not  handsome ;  but  this 
man"  .  .  . 

"  Truce  to  your  descriptions  ! "  said  Cennini.  "  Hark  !  see  ! 
Here  come  the  horsemen  and  the  banners.  That  standard," 
he  continued,  laying  his  hand  familiarly  on  Tito's  shoulder,  — 
"  that  carried  on  the  horse  with  white  trappings — that  with 
the  red  eagle  holding  the  green  dragon  between  his  talons, 
and  the  red  lily  over  the  eagle  —  is  the  Gonfalon  of  the  Guelf 

1  A  play  on  the  name  of  the  Dominicans  {Domini  Canes)  wliich  was  accepted  by 
themselves,  and  which  is  pictorially  represented  in  a  fresco  painted  for  them  by 
bimune  Memuii. 


A   FACE  IN-  THE   CROWD.  81 

party,  and  those  cavaliers  close  round  it  are  the  chief  officers 
of  the  Guelf  party.  That  is  one  of  our  proudest  banners, 
grumble  as  we  may ;  it  means  the  triumph  of  the  Guelfs, 
which  means  the  triumph  of  Florentine  will,  which  means 
triumph  of  the  popolani." 

"  Nay,  go  on,  Cennini,"  said  the  middle-aged  man,  seated  at 
the  window,  "  which  means  triumph  of  the  fat  popolani  over 
the  lean,  which  again  means  triumph  of  the  fattest  popolano 
over  those  who  are  less  fat." 

"  Cronaca,  you  are  becoming  sententious,"  said  the  printer ; 
"  Fra  Girolamo's  preaching  will  spoil  you,  and  make  you  take 
life  by  the  wrong  handle.  Trust  me,  your  cornices  will  lose 
half  their  beauty  if  you  begin  to  mingle  bitterness  with  them  ; 
that  is  the  maniera  Tedesca  which  you  used  to  declaim  against 
when  you  came  from  Rome.  The  next  palace  you  build  we 
shall  see  you  trying  to  put  the  Frate's  doctrine  into  stone." 

"  That  is  a  goodly  show  of  cavaliers,"  said  Tito,  who  had 
learned  by  this  time  the  best  way  to  please  Florentines  ;  "but 
are  there  not  strangers  among  them  ?    I  see  foreign  costumes." 

"  Assuredly,"  said  Cennini ;  "  you  see  there  the  Orators 
from  France,  Milan,  and  Venice,  and  behind  them  are  Eng- 
lish and  German  nobles  ;  for  it  is  customary  that  all  foreign 
visitors  of  distinction  pay  their  tribute  to  San  Giovanni  in 
the  train  of  that  gonfalon.  For  my  part,  I  think  our  Floren- 
tine cavaliers  sit  their  horses  as  well  as  any  of  those  cut-and- 
thrust  northerners,  whose  wits  lie  in  their  heels  and  saddles ; 
and  for  yon  Venetian,  I  fancy  he  would  feel  himself  more  at 
ease  on  the  back  of  a  dolphin.  We  ought  to  know  something 
of  horsemanship,  for  we  excel  all  Italy  in  the  sports  of  the 
Giostra,  and  the  money  we  spend  on  them.  But  you  will  see 
a  finer  show  of  our  chief  men  by  and  by,  Melema ;  my  brother 
himself  will  be  among  the  officers  of  the  Zecca." 

"  The  banners  are  the  better  sight,"  said  Piero  di  Cosimo, 
forgetting  the  noise  in  his  delight  at  the  winding  stream  of  color 
as  the  tributary  standards  advanced  round  the  piazza.  "  The 
Florentine  men  are  so-so ;  they  make  but  a  sovvy  show  at  this 
distance  with  their  patch  of  sallow  flesh-tint  above  the  black 
garments  ;  but  those  banners  with  their  velvet,  and  satin,  and 
miniver,  and  brocade,  and  their  endless  play  of  delicate  light 
and  shadow  !  —  Va!  your  human  talk  and  doings  are  a  tame 
jest ;  the  only  passionate  life  is  in  form  and  color." 

"  Ay,  Piero,  if  Satanasso  could  paint,  thou  wouldst  sell  thy 
soul  to  learn  his  secrets,"  said  Nello.  "  But  there  is  little 
likelihood  of  it,  seeing  the  blessed  angels  themselves  are  such 


82  ROM  OLA. 

poor  hands  at  chiaroscuro,  if  one  may  judge  from  their  capo- 
(Vopera,  the  Madonna  Nunziata." 

"  There  go  the  banners  of  Pisa  and  Arezzo/'  said  Cennini. 
''  Ay,  Messer  Pisano,  it  is  no  use  for  you  to  look  sullen ;  you 
may  as  well  carry  your  banner  to  our  San  Giovanni  with  a  good 
grace.  'Pisans  false,  Florentines  blind'  —  the  second  half  of 
that  proverb  will  hold  no  longer.  There  come  the  ensigns  of 
our  subject  towns  and  signories,  Melema ;  they  will  all  be  sus- 
pended in  San  Giovanni  until  this  day  next  year,  when  they 
will  give  place  to  new  ones." 

"  They  are  a  fair  sight,"  said  Tito ;  "  and  San  Giovanni  will 
surely  be  as  well  satisfied  with  that  produce  of  Italian  looms 
as  Minerva  with  her  peplos,  especially  as  he  contents  himself 
with  so  little  drapery.  But  my  eyes  are  less  delighted  with 
those  whirling  towers,  which  would  soon  make  me  fall  from 
the  window  in  sympathetic  vertigo." 

The  "  towers  "  of  which  Tito  spoke  were  a  part  of  the  pro- 
cession esteemed  very  glorious  by  the  Florentine  populace, 
and  being  perhaps  chiefly  a  kind  of  hyperbole  for  the  all-efli- 
cacious  wax  taper,  were  also  called  ceri.  But  inasmuch  as 
hyperbole  is  impracticable  in  a  real  and  literal  fashion,  these 
gigantic  ceri,  some  of  them  so  large  as  to  be  of  necessity  car- 
ried on  wheels,  were  not  solid  but  hollow,  and  had  their  sur- 
face made  not  solely  of  wax,  but  of  wood  and  pasteboard, 
gilded,  carved,  and  painted,  as  real  sacred  tapers  often  are, 
with  successive  circles  of  figures  —  warriors  on  horseback, 
foot-soldiers  with  lance  and  shield,  dancing  maidens,  animals, 
trees  and  fruits,  and  in  fine,  says  the  old  chronicler,  "  all 
things  that  could  delight  the  eye  and  the  heart ; "  the  hollow- 
ness  having  the  further  advantage  that  men  could  stand  inside 
these  hyperbolic  tapers  and  whirl  them  continually,  so  as  to 
produce  a  phantasmagoric  effect,  which,  considering  the 
towers  were  numerous,  must  have  been  calculated  to  produce 
dizziness  on  a  truly  magnificent  scale. 

"  Pestilenza  /  ^'  said  Piero  di  Cosimo,  moving  from  the  win- 
dow, "those  whirling  circles  one  above  the  other  are  worse 
than  the  jangling  of  all  the  bells.  Let  me  know  when  the 
last  taper  has  passed." 

"  Nay,  you  will  surely  like  to  be  called  when  the  contadin? 
come  carrying  their  torches,"  said  Nello ;  "you  Avould  not 
miss  the  country  folk  of  the  Mugello  and  the  Casentino,  of 
whom  your  favorite  Lionardo  would  make  a  hundred  grotesque 
sketches." 

"  No,"  said   Piero,  resolutely,  "  I  will  see  nothing  till   the 


A  FACE  IN  THE   CROWD,  83 

car  of  the  Zecca  comes.  I  have  seen  clowns  enough  holding 
tapers  aslant,  both  with  and  without  cowls,  to  last  me  for  my 
life." 

"  Here  it  comes,  then,  Piero  —  the  car  of  the  Zecca," 
called  out  Nello,  after  an  interval  during  which  towers  and 
tapers  in  a  descending  scale  of  size  had  been  making  their 
slow  transit. 

"  Fediddio  ! "  exclaimed  Francesco  Cei,  "  that  is  a  well- 
tanned  San  Giovanni !  some  stui-dy  Romagnole  beggar-man, 
I'll  warrant.  Our  Signoria  plays  the  host  to  all  the  Jewish 
and  Christian  scum  that  every  other  city  shuts  its  gates 
against,  and  lets  them  fatten  on  us  like  St.  Anthony's  swine." 

The  car  of  the  Zecca  or  Mint,  which  had  just  rolled  into 
sight,  was  originally  an  immense  wooden  tower  or  cero 
adorned  after  the  same  fashion  as  the  other  tributary  ceri, 
mounted  on  a  splendid  car,  and  drawn  by  two  mouse-colored 
oxen,  whose  mild  heads  looked  out  from  rich  trappings  bear- 
ing the  arms  of  the  Zecca.  But  the  latter  half  of  the  cen- 
tury was  getting  rather  ashamed  of  the  towers  with  their 
circular  or  spiral  paintings,  which  had  delighted  the  eyes  and 
the  hearts  of  the  other  half,  so  that  they  had  become  a  con- 
temptuous proverb,  and  any  ill-painted  figure  looking,  as  will 
sometimes  happen  to  figures  in  the  best  ages  of  art,  as  if  it 
had  been  boned  for  a  pie,  was  called  a  fantoccio  da  cero,  a 
tower-puppet ;  consequently  improved  taste,  with  Cecca  to 
help  it,  had  devised  for  the  magnificent  Zecca  a  triumphal  car 
like  a  pyramidal  catafalque,  with  ingenious  wheels  warranted 
to  turn  all  corners  easily.  Round  the  base  were  living  figures 
of  saints  and  angels  arrayed  in  sculpturesque  fashion  ;  and 
on  the  summit,  at  the  height  of  thirty  feet,  well  bound  to  an 
iron  rod  and  holding  an  iron  cross  also  firmly  infixed,  stood  a 
living  representative  of  St.  John  the  Baptist,  with  arms  and 
legs  bare,  a  garment  of  tiger-skins  about  his  body,  and  a 
golden  nimbus  fastened  on  his  head  —  as  the  Precursor  was 
wont  to  appear  in  the  cloisters  and  churches,  not  having  yet 
revealed  himself  to  painters  as  the  brown  and  sturdy  boy 
Avho  made  one  of  the  Holy  Family.  For  where  could  the 
image  of  the  patron  saint  be  more  fitly  placed  than  on  the  sym- 
bol of  the  Zecca?  Was  not  the  royal  prerogative  of  coining 
money  the  surest  token  that  a  city  had  won  its  independence  ? 
and  by  the  blessing  of  San  Giovanni  this  "  beautiful  sheep- 
fold  "  of  his  had  shown  that  token  earliest  among  the  Italian 
cities.  Nevertheless,  the  annual  function  of  representing  the 
patron  saint  was  not  among  the  high  prizes  of  public  life ;  it 


84  ROM  OLA. 

was  paid  for  with  something  like  ten  shillings,  a  cake  weigh- 
ing fourteen  pounds,  two  bottles  of  wine,  and  a  handsome 
supply  of  light  eatables :  the  money  being  furnished  by  the 
magnificent  Zecca,  and  the  payment  in  kind  being  by  peculiar 
"  privilege  "  presented  in  a  basket  suspended  on  a  pole  from 
an  upper  window  of  a  private  house,  whereupon  the  eidolon 
of  the  austere  saint  at  once  invigorated  himself  with  a  reason- 
able share  of  the  sweets  and  wine,  threw  the  remnants  to  the 
crowd,  and  embraced  the  mighty  cake  securely  with  his  right 
arm  through  the  remainder  of  his  passage.  This  was  the 
attitude  in  which  the  mimic  San  Giovanni  presented  himself 
as  the  tall  car  jerked  and  vibrated  on  its  slow  way  round  the 
piazza  to  the  northern  gate  of  the  Baptistery. 

"  There  go  the  Masters  of  the  Zecca,  and  there  is  my 
brother  —  you  see  him,  Melema  ? "  cried  Cennini,  with  an 
agreeable  stirring  of  pride  at  showing  a  stranger  what  was 
too  familiar  to  be  remarkable  to  fellow-citizens.  "Behind 
come  the  members  of  the  Corporation  of  Calimara,^  the  dealers 
in  foreign  cloth,  to  which  we  have  given  our  Florentine  finish  ; 
men  of  ripe  years,  you  see,  who  were  matriculated  before  you 
were  born ;  and  then  comes  the  famous  Art  of  Money- 
changers." 

"  Many  of  them  matriculated  also  to  the  noble  art  of  usury 
before  you  were  born,"  interrupted  Francesco  Cei,  "  as  you 
may  discern  by  a  certain  fitful  glare  of  the  eye  and  sharp 
curve  of  the  nose  which  manifest  their  descent  from  the  an- 
cient Harpies,  whose  portraits  you  saw  supporting  the  arms  of 
the  Zecca.  Shaking  off  old  prejudices  now,  such  a  procession 
as  that  of  some  four  hundred  passably  ugly  men  carrying  their 
tapers  in  open  daylight,  Diogenes-fashion,  as  if  they  were 
looking  for  a  lost  quattrino,  would  make  a  merry  spectacle  for 
the  Feast  of  Fools." 

"  Blaspheme  not  against  the  usages  of  our  city,"  said  Pietro 
Cennini,  much  offended.  "  There  are  new  wits  who  think 
they  see  things  more  truly  because  they  stand  on  their  heads 
to  look  at  them,  like  tumblers  and  mountebanks,  instead  of 
keeping  the  attitude  of  rational  men.  Doubtless  it  makes 
litrle  difference  to  Maestro  Vaiano's  monkeys  whether  they 
see  our  Donatello's  statue  of  Judith  with  their  heads  or  their 
tails  uppermost." 

"Your  solemnity  will  allow  some  quarter  to  playful  fancy, 
I  hope,"  said  Cei,  with  a  shrug,  "  else  what  becomes  of  the 
ancients,  whose  example  you  scholars  are  bound  to  revere, 

»  "Arte  di  Callmara,"  "  arte  "  beiug,  iu  this  use  ol  it,  equivalent  to  corporation. 


A   FACE  IN  THE   CROWD.  85 

Messer  Pietro  ?  Life  was  never  anything  but  a  perpetual  see- 
saw between  gravity  and  jest." 

"  Keep  your  jest  then  till  your  end  of  the  pole  is  upper- 
most," said  Cennini,  still  angry,  "and  that  is  not  when  the 
great  bond  of  our  Republic  is  expressing  itself  in  ancient 
symbols,  without  which  the  vulgar  would  be  conscious  of  noth- 
ing beyond  their  own  petty  wants  of  back  and  stomach,  and 
never  rise  to  the  sense  of  community  in  religion  and  law. 
There  has  been  no  great  people  without  processions,  and  the 
man  who  thinks  himself  too  wise  to  be  moved  by  them  to 
anything  but  contempt,  is  like  the  puddle  that  was  proud  of 
standing  alone  while  the  river  rushed  by." 

No  one  said  anything  after  this  indignant  burst  of  Cennini's 
till  he  himself  spoke  again. 

"  Hark  !  the  trumpets  of  the  Signoria :  now  comes  the  last 
stage  of  the  show,  Melema.  That  is  our  Gonfaloniere  in  the 
middle,  in  the  starred  mantle,  with  the  sword  carried  before 
him.  Twenty  years  ago  we  used  to  see  our  foreign  Podesta, 
who  was  our  judge  in  civil  causes,  walking  on  his  right  hand; 
but  our  Republic  has  been  over-doctored  by  clever  Medici. 
That  is  the  Proposto  ^  of  the  Priori  on  the  left ;  then  come 
the  other  seven  Priori ;  then  all  the  other  magistracies  and 
officials  of  our  Republic.    You  see  your  patron  the  Segretario  ?  " 

"  There  is  Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero  also,"  said  Tito  ;  "  his 
visage  is  a  fine  and  venerable  one,  though  it  has  worn  rather 
a  petrifying  look  towards  me." 

"Ah,"  said  Nello,  "he  is  the  dragon  that  guards  the  rem- 
nant of  old  Bardo's  gold,  which,  I  fancy,  is  chiefly  that  virgin 
gold  that  falls  about  the  fair  Romola's  head  and  shoulders ; 
eh,  my  Apollino  ?  "  he  added,  patting  Tito's  head. 

Tito  had  the  youthful  grace  of  blushing,  but  he  had  also  the 
adroit  and  ready  speech  that  prevents  a  blush  from  looking 
like  embarrassment.     He  replied  at  once,  — 

"  And  a  very  Pactolus  it  is  —  a  stream  with  golden  ripples. 
If  I  were  an  alchemist "  — 

He  was  saved  from  the  need  for  further  speech  by  the  sud- 
den fortissimo  of  drums  and  trumpets  and  fifes,  bursting  into 
the  breadth  of  the  piazza  in  a  grand  storm  of  sound  —  a  roar, 
a  blast,  and  a  whistling,  well  befitting  a  city  famous  for  its 
musical  instruments,  and  reducing  the  members  of  the  closest 
group  to  a  state  of  deaf  isolation. 

During  this  interval  Nello  observed  Tito's  fingers  moving 
in  recognition  of  some  one  in  the  crowd  below,  but  not  seeing 

1  Spokesman  or  Moderator. 


86  ROMOLA. 

the  direction  of  his  glance  he  failed  to  detect  the  object  of 
this  greeting — the  sweet  round  blue-eyed  face  under  a  white 
hood  —  immediately  lost  in  the  narrow  border  of  heads,  where 
there  was  a  continual  eclipse  of  round  contadina  cheeks  by  the 
harsh-lined  features  or  bent  shoulders  of  an  old  spadesman, 
and  where  profiles  turned  as  sharply  from  north  to  south  as 
weather-cocks  under  a  shifting  wind. 

But  when  it  was  felt  that  the  show  was  ended  —  when  the 
twelve  prisoners  released  in  honor  of  the  day,  and  the  very 
barberi  or  race-horses,  with  the  arms  of  their  owners  embroid- 
ered on  their  cloths,  had  followed  up  the  Signoria,  and  been 
duly  consecrated  to  San  Giovanni,  and  every  one  was  moving 
from  the  window  —  Nello,  whose  Florentine  curiosity  was  of 
that  lively  canine  sort  which  thinks  no  trifle  too  despicable 
for  investigation,  put  his  hand  on  Tito's  shoulder  and  said,  — 

"  What  acquaintance  was  that  you  were  making  signals  to, 
eh,  giovane  inio?  " 

"  Some  little  contadina  who  probably  mistook  me  for  an 
acquaintance,  for  she  had  honored  me  with  a  greeting." 

"Or  who  wished  to  begin  an  acquaintance,"  said  Nello. 
"  But  you  are  bound  for  the  Via  de'  Bardi  and  the  feast  of  the 
Muses  :  there  is  no  counting  on  you  for  a  frolic,  else  we 
might  have  gone  in  search  of  adventures  together  in  the 
crowd,  and  had  some  pleasant  fooling  in  honor  of  San  Gio- 
vanni. But  your  high  fortune  has  come  on  you  too  soon :  I 
don't  mean  the  professor's  mantle  —  that  is  roomy  enovigh  to 
hide  a  few  stolen  chickens,  but —  Messer  Endymion  minded 
his  manners  after  that  singular  good  fortune  of  his  ;  and  what 
says  our  Luigi  Pulci  ? 

" '  Da  quel  giorno  in  qua  cli'amor  m'accese 
Per  lei  son  fatto  e  gentile  e  cortese.'  " 

"  Nello,  amico  mio,  thou  hast  an  intolerable  trick  of  making 
life  stale  by  forestalling  it  with  tliy  talk,"  said  Tito,  shrug- 
ging his  shoulders  with  a  look  of  patient  resignation,  which 
was  his  nearest  approach  to  anger:  "not  to  mention  that  such 
ill-founded  babbling  would  be  held  a  great  offence  by  that 
same  goddess  whose  humble  worshipper  you  are  always  pro- 
fessing yourself." 

"  I  will  be  mute,"  said  Nello,  laying  his  finger  on  his  lips, 
with  a  responding  shrug.  "  But  it  is  only  under  our  four  eyes 
that  I  talk  any  folly  about  her." 

"Pardon !  you  were  on  the  verge  of  it  just  now  in  the  hear- 


A   MAN'S  RANSOM.  87 

ing  of  others.     If  you  want  to  ruin  me  in  the  minds  of  Bardo 
and  his  daughter  "  — 

"  Enough,  enough !  "  said  Nello.  "  I  am  an  absurd  old 
barber.  It  all  comes  from  that  abstinence  of  mine,  in  not 
making  bad  verses  in  my  youth :  for  want  of  letting  my 
folly  run  out  that  way  when  I  was  eighteen,  it  runs  out  at  my 
tongue's  end  now  I  am  at  the  unseemly  age  of  fifty.  But 
ISTello  has  not  got  his  head  muffled  for  all  that ;  he  can  see  a 
buffalo  in  the  snow.     Addio,  giovane  mio." 


CHAPTER  IX. 
A  man's  ransom. 

Tito  was  soon  down  among  the  crowd,  and,  notwithstanding 
his  indifferent  reply  to  hello's  question  about  his  chance  ac- 
quaintance, he  was  not  without  a  passing  wish,  as  he  made  his 
way  round  the  piazza  to  the  Corso  degli  Adimari,  that  he  might 
encounter  the  pair  of  blue  eyes  which  had  looked  up  towards 
him  from  under  the  square  bit  of  white  linen  drapery  that 
formed  the  ordinary  hood  of  the  contadina  at  festa  time.  He 
was  perfectly  well  aware  that  that  face  was  Tessa's  ;  but  he 
had  not  chosen  to  say  so.  What  had  Xello  to  do  with  the 
matter  ?  Tito  had  an  innate  love  of  reticence  —  let  us  say  a 
talent  for  it  —  which  acted  as  other  impulses  do,  without  any 
conscious  motive,  and,  like  all  people  to  whom  concealment  is 
easy,  he  would  now  and  then  conceal  something  which  had  as 
little  the  nature  of  a  secret  as  the  fact  that  he  had  seen  a 
flight  of  crows. 

But  the  passing  wish  about  the  pretty  Tessa  was  almost 
immediately  eclipsed  by  the  recurrent  recollection  of  that 
friar  whose  face  had  some  irrecoverable  association  for  him. 
Why  should  a  sickly  fanatic,  worn  with  fasting,  have  looked 
at  him  in  particular,  and  where  in  all  his  travels  could  he  re- 
member encountering  that  face  before  ?  Folly  !  such  vague 
memories  hang  about  the  mind  like  cobwebs,  with  a  tickling 
importunity  —  best  to  sweep  them  away  at  a  dash  :  and  Tito 
had  pleasanter  occupation  for  his  thoughts.  By  the  time  he 
was  turning  out  of  the  Corso  degli  Adimari  into  a  side-street 
he  was  caring  only  that  the  sun  was  high,  and  that  the  pro- 
cession had  kept  him  longer  than  he  had  intended  from  his 


88  ROM  OLA. 

visit  to  that  room  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  where  his  coming,  htf5 
knew,  was  anxiously  awaited.  He  felt  the  scene  of  his 
entrance  beforehand  :  the  joy  beaming  diffusedly  in  the  blind 
face  like  the  light  in  a  semi-transparent  lamp;  the  transient 
pink  flush  on  Romola's  face  and  neck,  which  subti-acted 
nothing  from  her  majesty,  but  only  gave  it  the  exquisite 
charm  of  womanly  sensitiveness,  heightened  still  more  by 
what  seemed  the  paradoxical  boy-like  frankness  of  her  look 
and  smile.  They  were  the  best  comrades  in  the  world  during 
the  hours  they  passed  together  round  the  blind  man's  chair : 
she  was  constantly  appealing  to  Tito,  and  he  was  informing 
her,  yet  he  felt  himself  strangely  in  subjection  to  Romola 
with  that  simplicity  of  hers  :  he  felt  for  the  first  time,  with- 
out defining  it  to  himself,  that  loving  awe  in  the  presence  of 
noble  womanhood,  which  is  perhaps  something  like  the  wor- 
ship paid  of  old  to  a  great  nature-goddess,  who  was  not  all- 
knowing,  but  whose  life  and  power  were  something  deeper 
and  more  primordial  than  knowledge.  They  had  never  been 
alone  together,  and  he  could  frame  to  himself  no  probable 
image  of  love-scenes  between  them  :  he  could  only  fancy  and 
wish  wildly  —  what  he  knew  was  impossible  —  that  Romola 
would  some  day  tell  him  that  she  loved  him.  One  day  in 
Greece,  as  he  was  leaning  over  a  wall  in  the  sunshine,  a  little 
black-eyed  peasant  girl,  who  had  rested  her  water-pot  on  the 
wall,  crept  gradually  nearer  and  nearer  to  him,  and  at  last 
shyly  asked  him  to  kiss  her,  putting  up  her  round  olive  cheek 
very  innocently.  Tito  was  used  to  love  that  came  in  this 
unsought  fashion.  But  Romola's  love  would  never  come  in 
that  way  :  would  it  ever  come  at  all  ?  —  and  yet  it  was  that 
topmost  apple  on  which  he  had  set  his  mind.  He  was  in  his 
fresh  youth  —  not  passionate,  but  impressible:  it  was  as 
inevitable  that  he  should  feel  lovingly  towards  Romola  as 
that  the  white  irises  should  be  reflected  in  the  clear  sunlit 
stream  ;  but  he  had  no  coxcombry,  and  he  had  an  intimate 
sense  that  Romola  was  something  very  much  above  him. 
Many  men  have  felt  the  same  before  a  large-eyed,  simple 
child. 

Nevertheless,  Tito  had  had  the  rapid  success  which  would 
have  made  some  men  presuming,  or  would  have  warranted 
him  in  thinking  that  there  would  be  no  great  presumption  in 
entertaining  an  agreeable  confidence  that  he  miglit  one  day 
be  the  husband  of  Romola  —  nay,  that  her  father  himself  was 
iTot  without  a  vision  of  such  a  future  for  him.  His  first 
auspicious  interview  with  Bartolommeo  Scala  had  proved  the 


A  MAN'S  RANSOM.  89 

ccmmencement  of  a  growing  favor  on  the  secretary's  part, 
and.  had  led  to  an  issue  which  would  have  been  enough  to 
make  Tito  decide  on  Florence  as  the  place  in  which  to 
establish  himself,  even  if  it  had.  held  no  other  magnet. 
Politian  was  professor  of  Greek  as  well  as  Latin  at  Florence, 
professorial  chairs  being  maintained,  there,  although  the 
university  had  been  removed  to  Pisa ;  but  for  a  long  time 
Demetrio  Calcondila,  one  of  the  most  eminent  and  respect- 
able among  the  emigrant  Greeks,  had.  also  held  a  Greek  chair, 
simultaneously  with  the  too  predominant  Italian.  Calcondila 
was  now  gone  to  Milan,  and  there  was  no  counterpoise  or 
rival  to  Politian  such  as  was  desired  for  him  by  the  friends 
who  wished  him  to  be  taught  a  little  propriety  and  humility. 
Scala  was  far  from  being  the  only  friend  of  this  class,  and  he 
found  several  who,  if  they  were  not  among  those  thirsty 
admirers  of  mediocrity  that  were  glad  to  be  refreshed  with 
his  verses  in  hot  weather,  were  yet  quite  willing  to  join  him  in 
doing  that  moral  service  to  Politian.  It  was  finally  agreed 
that  Tito  should  be  supported  in  a  Greek  chair,  as  Demetrio 
Calcondila  had  been  by  Lorenzo  himself,  who,  being  at  the 
same  time  the  affectionate  patron  of  Politian,  had  shown 
by  precedent  that  there  was  nothing  invidious  in  such  a 
measure,  but  only  a  zeal  for  true  learning  and  for  the  in- 
struction of  the  Florentine  youth. 

Tito  was  thus  sailing  under  the  fairest  breeze,  and  besides 
convincing  fair  judges  that  his  talents  squared  with  his  good 
fortune,  he  wore  that  fortune  so  easily  and  unpretentiously 
that  no  one  had  yet  been  offended  by  it.  He  was  not  unlikely 
to  get  into  the  best  Florentine  society  :  society  where  there 
was  much  more  plate  than  the  circle  of  enamelled  silver  in 
the  centre  of  the  brass  dishes,  and  where  it  was  not  forbidden 
by  the  Signory  to  wear  the  richest  brocade.  For  where  could 
a  handsome  young  scholar  not  be  welcome  when  he  could 
touch  the  lute  and  troll  a  gay  song  ?  That  bright  face,  that 
easy  smile,  that  liquid  voice,  seemed  to  give  life  a  holiday 
aspect;  just  as  a  strain  of  gay  music  and  the  hoisting  of 
colors  make  the  work-worn  and  the  sad  rather  ashamed  of 
showing  themselves.  Here  was  a  professor  likely  to  render 
the  Greek  classics  amiable  to  the  sons  of  great  houses. 

And  that  was  not  the  whole  of  Tito's  good  fortune  ;  for  he 
had  sold  all  his  jewels,  except  the  ring  he  did  not  choose  to 
part  with,  and  he  was  master  of  full  five  hundred  gold  florins. 

Yet  the  moment  when  he  first  had  this  sum  in  his  posses- 
sion was  the  crisis  of   the  first  serious  struggle   his   facile, 


90  ROMOLA. 

good-humored  nature  had  known.  An  importunate  thought, 
of  which  he  had  till  now  refused  to  see  more  than  the  shadow 
as  it  dogged  his  footsteps,  at  last  rushed  upon  him  and  grasped 
him  :  he  was  obliged  to  pause  and  decide  whether  he  would 
surrender  and  obey,  or  whether  he  would  give  the  refusal  that 
must  carry  irrevocable  consequences.  It  was  in  the  room 
above  Nello's  shop,  which  Tito  had  now  hired  as  a  lodging, 
that  the  elder  Cennini  handed  him  the  last  quota  of  the  sum 
on  behalf  of  Bernardo  Rucellai,  the  purchaser  of  the  two 
most  valuable  gems. 

"  Ecco,  giovane  mio !  "  said  the  respectable  printer  and 
goldsmith,  "  you  have  now  a  pretty  little  fortune ;  and  if  you 
will  take  my  advice,  you  will  let  me  place  your  florins  in  a 
safe  quarter,  where  they  may  increase  and  multiply,  instead 
of  slipping  through  your  fingers  for  banquets  and  other 
follies  which  are  rife  among  our  Florentine  youth.  And  it 
has  been  too  much  the  fashion  of  scholars,  especially  when, 
like  our  Pietro  Crinito,  they  think  their  scholarship  needs  to 
be  scented  and  broidered,  to  squander  with  one  hand  till  they 
have  been  fain  to  beg  with  the  other.  I  have  brought  you  the 
money,  and  you  are  free  to  make  a  wise  choice  or  an  unwise  : 
I  shall  see  on  which  side  the  balance  dips.  We  Florentines 
hold  no  man  a  member  of  an  Art  till  he  has  shown  his  skill 
and  been  matriculated  \  and  no  man  is  matriculated  to  the  art 
of  life  till  he  has  been  well  tempted.  If  you  make  up  your 
mind  to  put  your  florins  out  to  usury,  you  can  let  me  know 
to-morrow.  A  scholar  may  marry,  and  should  have  something 
in  readiness  for  the  morgen-cap}     Addio.^' 

As  Cennini  closed  the  door  behind  him,  Tito  turned  round 
with  the  smile  dying  out  of  his  face,  and  fixed  his  eyes  on  the 
table  where  the  florins  lay.  He  made  no  other  movement,  but 
stood  with  his  thumbs  in  his  belt,  looking  down,  in  that 
transfixed  state  which  accompanies  the  concentration  of 
consciousness  on  some  inward  image. 

"  A  man's  ransom  ! "  —  who  was  it  that  had  said  five  hun- 
dred florins  was  more  than  a  man's  ransom  ?  If  now,  under 
this  midday  sun,  on  some  hot  coast  far  away,  a  man  some- 
what stricken  in  years  —  a  man  not  without  high  thoughts 
and  with  the  most  passionate  heart  —  a  man  who  long  years 
ago  had  rescued  a  little  boy  from  a  life  of  beggary,  filth,  and 
cruel  wrong,  had  reared  him  tenderly  and  been  to  him  as  a 
father  —  if  that  man  were  now  under  this  summer  sun,  toiling 

I  A  sum  given  by  the  bridegroom  to  the  bride  the  day  after  the  marriage 
{Aforgengaie) . 


A   MAN'S  RANSOM.  91 

as  a  slave,  hewing  wood  and  drawing  water,  perhaps  being 
smitten  and  buffeted  because  he  was  not  deft  and  active  ?  If 
he  were  saying  to  himself,  "Tito  will  find  me  :  he  had  but  to 
carry  our  manuscripts  and  gems  to  Venice ;  he  will  have 
raised  money,  and  will  never  rest  till  he  finds  me  out  "  ?  If 
that  were  certain,  could  he,  Tito,  see  the  price  of  the  gems 
lying  before  him,  and  say,  "  I  will  stay  at  Florence,  where  I 
am  fanned  by  soft  airs  of  promised  love  and  prosperity ;  I 
will  not  risk  myself  for  his  sake "  ?  No,  surely  not,  if  it 
ivere  certain.  But  nothing  could  be  farther  from  certainty. 
The  galley  had  been  taken  by  a  Turkish  vessel  on  its  way  to 
Delos  :  that  was  known  by  the  report  of  the  companion  galley, 
which  had  escaped.  But  there  had  been  resistance,  and 
probable  bloodshed ;  a  man  had  been  seen  falling  overboard  : 
who  were  the  survivors,  and  what  had  befallen  them  amongst 
all  the  multitude  of  possibilities  ?  Had  not  he,  Tito,  suffered 
shipwreck  and  narrowly  escaped  drowning  ?  He  had  good 
cause  for  feeling  the  omnipresence  of  casualties  that 
threatened  all  projects  with  futility.  The  rumor  that  they 
were  pirates  who  had  a  settlement  in  Delos  was  not  to  be 
depended  on,  or  might  be  nothing  to  the  purpose.  What, 
probably  enough,  would  be  the  result  if  he  were  to  quit 
Florence  and  go  to  Venice  ;  get  authoritative  letters  —  yes,  he 
knew  that  might  be  done  —  and  set  out  for  the  Archipelago  ? 
Why,  that  he  should  be  himself  seized,  and  spend  all  his 
florins  on  preliminaries,  and  be  again  a  destitute  wanderer  — 
with  no  more  gems  to  sell. 

Tito  had  a  clearer  vision  of  that  result  than  of  the  possible 
moment  when  he  might  find  his  father  again,  and  carry  him 
deliverance.  It  would  surely  be  an  unfairness  that  he,  in  his 
full  ripe  youth,  to  whom  life  had  hitherto  had  some  of  the 
stint  and  subjection  of  a  school,  should  turn  his  back  on 
promised  love  and  distinction,  and  perhaps  never  be  visited  by 
that  promise  again.  "And  yet,"  he  said  to  himself,  "if  I 
were  certain  that  Baldassarre  Calvo  was  alive,  and  that  I  co.ald 
free  him,  by  whatever  exertions  or  perils,  I  would  go  now  — 
now  I  have  the  money  :  it  was  useless  to  debate  the  matter 
before.  I  would  go  now  to  Bardo  and  Bartolommeo  Scala,  and 
tell  them  the  whole  truth."  Tito  did  not  say  to  himself  so 
distinctly  that  if  those  two  men  had  known  the  whole  truth 
he  was  aware  there  would  have  been  no  alternative  for  him 
but  to  go  in  search  of  his  benefactor,  who,  if  alive,  was  the 
rightful  owner  of  the  gems,  and  whom  he  had  always 
equivocally  spoken  of  as  "  lost ;  "  he  did  not  say  to  himself  — 


92  ROMOLA. 

what  he  was  not  ignorant  of  —  that  Greeks  of  distinction  had 
made  sacrifices,  taken  voyages  again  and  again,  and  sought 
help  from  crowned  and  mitred  heads  for  the  sake  of  freeing 
relatives  from  slavery  to  the  Turks.  Public  opinion  did  not 
regard  this  as  exceptional  virtue. 

Tliis  was  his  first  real  colloquy  with  himself :  he  had  gone 
on  following  the  impulses  of  the  moment,  and  one  of  those 
impulses  had  been  to  conceal  half  the  fact ;  he  had  never 
considered  this  part  of  his  conduct  long  enough  to  face  the 
consciousness  of  his  motives  for  the  concealment.  What  was 
the  use  of  telling  the  whole  ?  It  was  true,  the  thought  had 
crossed  his  mind  several  times  since  he  had  quitted  Nauplia 
that,  after  all,  it  was  a  great  relief  to  be  quit  of  Baldassarre, 
and  he  would  have  liked  to  know  who  it  was  that  had  fallen 
overboard.  But  such  thoughts  spring  inevitably  out  of  a 
relation  that  is  irksome.  Baldassarre  was  exacting,  and  had 
got  stranger  as  he  got  older :  he  was  constantly  scrutinizing 
Tito's  mind  to  see  whether  it  answered  to  his  own  exaggerated 
expectations  ;  and  age  —  the  age  of  a  thick-set,  heavy-browed, 
bald  man  beyond  sixty,  whose  intensity  and  eagerness  in  the 
grasp  of  ideas  have  long  taken  the  character  of  monotony 
and  repetition,  may  be  looked  at  from  many  points  of  view 
without  being  found  attractive.  Such  a  man  stranded  among 
new  acquaintances,  unless  he  had  the  philosopher's  stone, 
would  hardly  find  rank,  youth,  and  beauty  at  his  feet.  The 
feelings  that  gather  fervor  from  novelty  will  be  of  little  help 
towards  making  the  world  a  home  for  dimmed  and  faded 
human  beings ;  and  if  there  is  any  love  of  which  they  are  not 
widowed,  it  must  be  the  love  that  is  rooted  in  memories  and 
distils  perpetually  the  sweet  balms  of  fidelity  and  forbearing 
tenderness. 

But  surely  such  memories  were  not  absent  from  Tito's 
mind  ?  Far  in  the  backward  vista  of  his  remembered  life, 
when  he  was  only  seven  years  old,  Baldassarre  had  rescued 
him  from  blows,  had  taken  him  to  a  home  that  seemed  like 
opened  paradise,  where  there  was  sweet  food  and  soothing 
caresses,  all  had  on  Baldassarre's  knee  ;  and  from  that  time 
till  the  hour  they  had  parted,  Tito  had  been  the  one  centre  of 
Baldassarre's  fatherly  cares. 

And  he  had  been  docile,  pliable,  quick  of  apprehension, 
ready  to  acquire :  a  very  bright  lovely  boy,  a  youth  of  even 
splendid  grace,  who  seemed  quite  without  vices,  as  if  that 
beautiful  form  represented  a  vitality  so  exquisitely  poised 
and  balanced  that  it  could  know  no  uneasy  desires,  no  unrest 


A   MAN'S  RANSOM.  93 

—  a  radiant  presence  for  a  lonely  man  to  have  won  for  him- 
self. If  he  were  silent  when  his  father  expected  some 
response,  still  he  did  not  look  moody ;  if  he  declined  some 
labor  —  why,  he  flung  himself  down  with  such  a  charming, 
half-smiling,  half-pleading  air,  that  the  pleasure  of  looking  at 
him  made  amends  to  one  who  had  watched  his  growth  with 
a  sense  of  claim  and  possession :  the  curves  of  Tito's  mouth 
had  ineffable  good-humor  in  them.  And  then,  the  quick 
talent  to  which  everything  came  readily,  from  philosophical 
systems  to  the  rhymes  of  a  street  ballad  caught  up  at  a 
hearing  !  Would  any  one  have  said  that  Tito  had  not  made 
a  rich  return  to  his  benefactor,  or  that  his  gratitude  and 
affection  would  fail  on  any  great  demand  ? 

He  did  not  admit  that  his  gratitude  had  failed ;  but  it  was 
not  certain  that  Baldassarre  was  in  slavery,  not  certain  that 
he  was  living. 

"  Do  I  not  owe  something  to  myself  ?  "  said  Tito,  inwardly, 
with  a  slight  movement  of  his  shoulders,  the  first  he  had  made 
since  he  had  turned  to  look  down  at  the  florins.  "  Before  I 
quit  everything,  and  incur  again  all  the  risks  of  which  I  am 
even  now  weary,  I  must  at  least  have  a  reasonable  hope.  Am 
I  to  spend  my  life  in  a  wandering  search  ?  /  believe  he  is 
dead.  Cennini  was  right  about  my  florins  :  I  will  place  them 
in  his  hands  to-morrow." 

When,  the  next  morning,  Tito  put  this  determination  into 
act  he  had  chosen  his  color  in  the  game,  and  had  given  an 
inevitable  bent  to  his  wishes.  He  had  made  it  impossible  that 
he  should  not  from  henceforth  desire  it  to  be  the  truth  that 
his  father  was  dead  ;  impossible  that  he  should  not  be  tempted 
to  baseness  rather  than  that  the  precise  facts  of  his  conduct 
should  not  remain  forever  concealed. 

Under  every  guilty  secret  there  is  hidden  a  brood  of  guilty 
wishes,  whose  unwholesome  infecting  life  is  cherished  by  the 
darkness.  The  contaminating  effect  of  deeds  often  lies  less 
in  the  commission  than  in  the  consequent  adjustment  of  our 
desires  —  the  enlistment  of  our  self-interest  on  the  side  of 
falsity ;  as,  on  the  other  hand,  the  purifying  influence  of  public 
confession  springs  from  the  fact,  that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is 
forever  swept  away,  and  the  soul  recovers  the  noble  attitude 
of  simplicity. 

Besides,  in  this  first  distinct  colloquy  with  himself  the  ideas 
which  had  previously  been  scattered  and  interrupted  had  now 
concentrated  themselves ;  the  little  rills  of  selfishness  had 
united  and  made  a  channel,  so  that  they  could  never  again 


94  ROMOLA. 

meet  witli  the  same  resistance.  Hitherto  Tito  had  left  in 
vague  indecision  the  question  whether,  with  the  means  in  his 
powei*,  he  would  not  return,  and  ascertain  his  father's  fate  ;  he 
had  now  made  a  definite  excuse  to  himself  for  not  taking  that 
course ;  he  had  avowed  to  himself  a  choice  which  he  would 
have  been  ashamed  to  avow  to  others,  and  which  would  have 
made  him  ashamed  in  the  resurgent  presence  of  his  father. 
But  the  inward  shame,  the  reflex  of  that  outward  law  which 
the  great  heart  of  mankind  makes  for  every  individual  man, 
a  reflex  which  will  exist  even  in  the  absence  of  the  sympa- 
thetic impulses  that  need  no  law,  but  rush  to  the  deed  of 
fidelit}'  and  pity  as  inevitably  as  the  brute  mother  shields  her 
young  from  the  attack  of  the  hereditary  enemy  —  that  inward 
shame  was  showing  its  blushes  in  Tito's  determined  assertion 
to  himself  that  his  father  was  dead,  or  that  at  least  search 
was  hopeless. 


CHAPTER  X. 

UNDER    THE    PLANE-TREE. 

On  the  day  of  San  Giovanni  it  was  already  three  weeks  ago 
that  Tito  had  handed  his  florins  to  Cennini,  and  we  have  seen 
that  as  he  set  out  towards  the  Via  de'  Bardi  he  showed  all  the 
outward  signs  of  a  mind  at  ease.  How  should  it  be  otherwise  ? 
He  never  jarred  with  what  was  immediately  around  him,  and 
his  nature  was  too  joyous,  too  unapprehensive,  for  the  hidden 
and  the  distant  to  grasp  him  in  the  shape  of  a  dread.  As  he 
turned  out  of  the  hot  sunshine  into  the  shelter  of  a  narrow 
street,  took  off  the  black  cloth  berretta,  or  simple  cap  with 
upturned  lappet,  which  just  crowned  his  brown  curls,  pushing 
his  hair  and  tossing  his  head  backward  to  court  the  cooler  air, 
there  was  no  brand  of  duplicity  on  his  brow ;  neither  was 
there  any  stamp  of  candor:  it  was  simply  a  finely  formed, 
square,  smooth  young  brow.  And  the  slow  absent  glance  he 
cast  around  at  the  upper  windows  of  the  houses  had  neither 
more  dissimulation  in  it,  nor  more  ingenuousness,  than  belongs 
to  a  youthful  well-opened  eyelid  with  its  unwearied  breadth 
of  gaze ;  to  perfectly  pellucid  lenses ;  to  the  uudimmed  dark 
of  a  rich  brown  iris ;  and  to  a  pure  cerulean-tinted  angle  of 
whiteness  streaked  with  the  delicate  shadows  of  long  eyelashes. 
Was  it  that  Tito's  face  attracted  or  repelled  according  to  the 


UNDER    THE  PLANE-TREE.  95 

mental  attitude  of  the  observer  ?  Was  it  a  cipher  with  more 
than  one  key  ?  The  strong,  unmistakable  expression  in  his 
whole  air  and  person  was  a  negative  one,  and  it  was  perfectly 
veracious ;  it  declared  the  absence  of  any  uneasy  claim,  any 
restless  vanity,  and  it  made  the  admiration  that  followed  him 
as  he  passed  among  the  troop  of  holiday-makers  a  thoroughly 
willing  tribute. 

For  by  this  time  the  stir  of  the  Festa  was  felt  even  in  the 
narrowest  side-streets ;  the  throng  which  had  at  one  time  been 
concentrated  in  the  lines  through  which  the  procession  had  to 
pass,  was  now  streaming  out  in  all  directions  in  pursuit  of  a 
new  object.  Such  intervals  of  a  Festa  are  precisely  the 
moments  when  the  vaguely  active  animal  spirits  of  a  crowd 
are  likely  to  be  the  most  petulant  and  most  ready  to  sacrifice 
a  stray  individual  to  the  greater  happiness  of  the  greater 
number.  As  Tito  entered  the  neighborhood  of  San  Martino, 
he  found  the  throng  rather  denser ;  and  near  the  hostelry  of 
the  BerUicce,  or  Baboons,  there  was  evidently  some  object 
which  was  arresting  the  passengers  and  forming  them  into  a 
knot.  It  needed  nothing  of  great  interest  to  draw  aside 
passengers  unfreighted  with  a  purpose,  and  Tito  was  prepar- 
ing to  turn  aside  into  an  adjoining  street,  when,  amidst  the 
loud  laughter,  his  ear  discerned  a  distressed  childish  voice 
crying,  "  Loose  me  !  Holy  Virgin,  help  me  !  "  which  at  once 
determined  him  to  push  his  way  into  the  knot  of 
gazers.  He  had  just  had  time  to  perceive  that  the  distressed 
voice  came  from  a  young  contadina,  whose  white  hood  had 
fallen  off  in  the  struggle  to  get  her  hands  free  from  the  grasp 
of  a  man  in  the  party-colored  dress  of  a  cerretano,  or  conjurer, 
who  was  making  laughing  attempts  to  soothe  and  cajole  her, 
evidently  carrying  with  him  the  amused  sympathy  of  the 
spectators.  These,  by  a  persuasive  variety  of  words  signify- 
ing simpleton,  for  which  the  Florentine  dialect  is  rich  in 
equivalents,  seemed  to  be  arguing  with  the  contadina  against 
her  obstinacy.  At  the  first  moment  the  girl's  face  was  turned 
away,  and  he  saw  only  her  light-brown  hair  plaited  and 
fastened  with  a  long  silver  pin  ;  but  in  the  next,  the  struggle 
brought  her  face  opposite  Tito's,  and  he  saw  the  baby 
features  of  Tessa,  her  blue  eyes  filled  with  tears,  and  her 
under-lip  quivering.  Tessa,  too,  saw  him,  and  through  the 
mist  of  her  swelling  tears  there  beamed  a  sudden  hope,  like 
that  in  the  face  of  a  little  child,  when,  held  by  a  stranger 
against  its  will,  it  sees  a  familiar  hand  stretched  out. 

In  an  instant  Tito  had  pushed  his  way  through  the  barrier 


96  ROM  OLA. 

of  bystanders,  whose  curiosity  made  them  ready  to  turn  aside 
at  the  sudden  interference  of  this  handsome  young  signor,  had 
grasped  Tessa's  waist,  and  had  said,  ^'  Loose  this  child  !  What 
right  have  you  to  hold  her  against  her  will  ?  " 

The  conjurer  —  a  man  with  one  of  those  faces  in  which  the 
angles  of  the  eye  and  eyebrows,  of  the  nostrils,  mouth,  and 
sharply  defined  jaw,  all  tend  upward  —  showed  his  small  regu- 
lar teeth  in  an  impish  but  not  ill-natured  grin,  as  he  let  go 
Tessa's  hands,  and  stretched  out  his  own  backward,  shrugging 
his  shoulders,  and  bending  them  forward  a  little  in  a  half -apol- 
ogetic, half-protesting  manner. 

"  I  mean  the  ragazza  no  evil  in  the  world,  Messere :  ask  this 
respectable  company.  I  was  only  going  to  show  them  a  few 
samples  of  my  skill,  in  which  this  little  damsel  might  have 
helped  me  the  better  because  of  her  kitten  face,  which  would 
have  assured  them  of  open  dealing  ;  and  I  had  promised  her  a 
lapful  of  confetti  as  a  reward.  But  what  then  ?  Messer  has 
doubtless  better  confetti  at  hand,  and  she  knows  it." 

A  general  laugh  among  the  bystanders  accompanied  these 
last  words  of  the  conjurer,  raised,  probably,  by  the  look  of 
relief  and  confidence  with  which  Tessa  clung  to  Tito's  arm,  as 
he  drew  it  from  her  waist,  and  placed  her  hand  within  it.  She 
only  cared  about  the  laugh  as  she  might  have  cared  about  the 
roar  of  wild  beasts  from  which  she  was  escaping,  not  attaching 
any  meaning  to  it ;  but  Tito,  who  had  no  sooner  got  her  on  his 
arm  than  he  foresaw  some  embarrassment  in  the  situation, 
hastened  to  get  clear  of  observers  who,  having  been  despoiled 
of  an  expected  amusement,  were  sure  to  re-establish  the  bal- 
ance by  jest. 

"  See,  see,  little  one  !  here  is  your  hood,"  said  the  conjurer, 
throwing  the  bit  of  white  drapery  over  Tessa's  head.  "  Orsu, 
bear  me  no  malice  ;  come  back  to  me  when  Messere  can  spare 
you." 

"  Ah  !  Maestro  Vaiano,  she'll  come  back  presently,  as  the 
toad  said  to  the  harrow,"  called  out  one  of  the  spectators,  see- 
ing how  Tessa  started  and  shrank  at  the  action  of  the  conjurer. 

Tito  pushed  his  way  vigorously  towards  the  corner  of  a  side 
street,  a  little  vexed  at  this  delay  in  his  progress  to  the  Via 
de'  Bardi,  and  intending  to  get  rid  of  the  poor  little  contadina 
as  soon  as  possible.  The  next  street,  too,  had  its  passengers 
inclined  to  make  holiday  remarks  on  so  unusual  a  pair  ;  but 
they  had  no  sooner  entered  it  than  he  said,  in  a  kind  but  hur- 
ried manner,  "  Now,  little  one,  where  were  you  going  ?  Are 
you  come  by  yourself  to  the  Festa  ?  " 


UNDER   THE  PLANE-TREE.  97 

"  Ah,  no ! "  said  Tessa,  looking  frightened  and  distressed 
again;  ''I  have  lost  my  mother  in  the  crowd — her  and  my 
father-in-law.  They  will  be  angry  —  he  will  beat  me.  It  was 
in  the  crowd  in  San  Pulinari — somebody  pushed  me  along 
and  I  couldn't  stop  myself,  so  I  got  away  from  them.  Oh,  I 
don't  know  where  they're  gone  !     Please,  don't  leave  me  !  " 

Her  eyes  had  been  swelling  with  tears  again,  and  she  ended 
with  a  sob. 

Tito  hurried  along  again  :  the  Church  of  the  Badia  was  not 
far  off.  They  could  enter  it  by  the  cloister  that  opened  at  the 
back,  and  in  the  church  he  could  talk  to  Tessa  —  perhaps 
leave  her.  No  !  it  was  an  hour  at  which  the  church  was  not 
open ;  but  they  paused  under  the  shelter  of  the  cloister,  and  he 
said,  "  Have  you  no  cousin  or  friend  in  Florence,  my  little 
Tessa,  whose  house  you  could  find  ;  or  are  you  afraid  of  walk- 
ing by  yourself  since  you  have  been  frightened  by  the  con- 
jurer ?  I  am  in  a  hurry  to  get  to  Oltrarno,  but  if  I  could  take 
you  anywhere  near  "  — 

"  Oh,  I  am  frightened  :  he  was  the  devil  —  I  know  he  was. 
And  I  don't  know  where  to  go.  I  have  nobody :  and  my 
mother  meant  to  have  her  dinner  somewhere,  and  I  don't  know 
where.     Holy  Madonna  !  I  shall  be  beaten." 

The  corners  of  the  pouting  mouth  went  down  piteously,  and 
the  poor  little  bosom  with  the  beads  on  it  above  the  green 
serge  gown  heaved  so,  that  there  was  no  longer  any  help  for 
it :  a  loud  sob  would  come,  and  the  big  tears  fell  as  if  they 
were  making  up  for  lost  time.  Here  was  a  situation  !  It 
would  have  been  brutal  to  leave  her,  and  Tito's  nature  was  all 
gentleness.  He  wished  at  that  moment  that  he  had  not  been 
expected  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi.  As  he  saw  her  lifting  up  her 
holiday  apron  to  catch  the  hurrying  tears,  he  laid  his  hand, 
too,  on  the  apron,  and  rubbed  one  of  the  cheeks  and  kissed  the 
baby-like  roundness. 

"  My  poor  little  Tessa  !  leave  off  crying.  Let  us  see  what 
can  be  done.     Where  is  your  home  —  where  do  you  live  ?  " 

There  was  no  answer,  but  the  sobs  began  to  subside  a  little 
and  the  drops  to  fall  less  quickly. 

"  Come  !  I'll  take  you  a  little  way,  if  you'll  tell  me  where 
you  want  to  go." 

The  apron  fell,  and  Tessa's  face  began  to  look  as  contented 
as  a  cherub's  budding  from  a  cloud.  The  diabolical  conjurer, 
the  anger  and  the  beating,  seemed  a  long  way  off. 

"  I  think  I'll  go  home,  if  you'll  take  me,"  she  said,  in  a 
half   whisper,  looking  up  at  Tito  with  wide  blue  eyes,  and 


98  ROMOLA. 

with    something  sweeter  than  a  smile  —  with  a    childlike 
calm. 

"  Come,  then,  little  one,"  said  Tito,  in  a  caressing  tone,  put- 
ting her  arm  within  his  again.     "  Which  way  is  it  ?  " 

''  Beyond  Peretola  —  where  the  large  pear-tree  is." 

"  Peretola  ?  Out  at  which  gate,  pazzarella  ?  I  am  a  stran 
ger,  you  must  remember." 

"  Out  at  the  Por  del  Prato,"  said  Tessa,  moving  along  with 
a  very  fast  hold  on  Tito's  arm. 

He  did  not  know  all  the  turnings  well  enough  to  venture  on 
an  attempt  at  choosing  the  quietest  streets ;  and  besides,  it 
occurred  to  him  that  where  the  passengers  were  most  numer- 
ous there  was,  perhaps,  the  most  chance  of  meeting  with 
Monna  Ghita  and  finding  an  end  to  his  knight-errantship. 
So  he  made  straight  for  Porta  Rossa,  and  on  to  Ognissanti, 
showing  his  usual  bright  propitiatory  face  to  the  mixed  ob- 
servers who  threw  their  jests  at  him  and  his  little  heavy-shod 
maiden  with  much  liberality.  Mingled  with  the  more  decent 
holiday-makers  there  were  frolicsome  apprentices,  rather  envi- 
ous of  his  good  fortune  ;  bold-eyed  women  with  the  badge  of 
the  yellow  veil ;  beggars  who  thrust  forward  their  caps  for 
alms,  in  derision  at  Tito's  evident  haste  ;  dicers,  sharpers,  and 
loungers  of  the  worst  sort ;  boys  whose  tongues  were  used  to 
wag  in  concert  at  the  most  brutal  street  games  :  for  the  streets 
of  Florence  were  not  always  a  moral  spectacle  in  those  times, 
and  Tessa's  terror  at  being  lost  in  the  crowd  was  not  wholly 
unreasonable. 

When  they  reached  the  Piazza  d'Ognissanti,  Tito  slackened 
his  pace ;  they  were  both  heated  with  their  hurried  walk,  and 
here  was  a  wider  space  where  they  could  take  breath.  They 
sat  down  on  one  of  the  stone  benches  which  were  frequent 
against  the  walls  of  old  Florentine  houses. 

''  Holy  Virgin  !  "  said  Tessa ;  "  I  am  glad  we  have  got  away 
from  those  women  and  boys ;  but  I  was  not  frightened,  because 
you  could  take  care  of  me." 

''  Pretty  little  Tessa !  "  said  Tito,  smiling  at  her.  "  What 
makes  you  feel  so  safe  with  me  ?  " 

"  Because  you  are  so  beautiful  — like  the  people  going  into 
Paradise  :  they  are  all  good." 

"  It  is  a  long  while  since  you  had  your  breakfast,  Tessa," 
said  Tito,  seeing  some  stalls  near,  with  fruit  and  sweetmeats 
upon  them.     *'  Are  you  hungry  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  think  I  am  —  if  you  will  have  some  too." 

Tito  bought  some  apricots,  and  cakes,  and  comfits,  and  put 
them  into  her  apron. 


UNDER   THE  PLANE-TREE.  99 

"  Come,"  he  said,  "  let  us  walk  on  to  the  Prate,  and  then 
perhaps  you  will  not  be  afraid  to  go  the  rest  of  the  way 
alone." 

"  But  you  will  have  some  of  the  apricots  and  things,"  said 
Tessa,  rising  obediently  and  gathering  up  her  apron  as  a  bag 
for  her  store. 

"  We  will  see/'  said  Tito  aloud ;  and  to  himself  he  said, 
"  Here  is  a  little  contadina  who  might  inspire  a  better  idyl 
than  Lorenzo  de'  Medici's  '  Neneia  da  Barberino,'  that  Nello's 
friends  rave  about ;  if  I  were  only  a  Theocritus,  or  had  time 
to  cultivate  the  necessary  experience  by  unseasonable  walks 
of  this  sort !  However,  the  mischief  is  done  now :  I  am  so 
late  already  that  another  half-hour  will  make  no  difference. 
Pretty  little  pigeon  ! " 

"  We  have  a  garden  and  plenty  of  pears,"  said  Tessa,  ''  and 
two  cows,  besides  the  mules  ;  and  I'm  very  fond  of  them.  But 
my  father-in-law  is  a  cross  man :  I  wish  my  mother  had  not 
married  him.     I  think  he  is  wicked ;  he  is  very  ugly." 

"  And  does  your  mother  let  him  beat  you,  poverina  ?  You 
said  you  were  afraid  of  being  beaten." 

"  Ah,  my  mother  herself  scolds  me ;  she  loves  my  young 
sister  better,  and  thinks  I  don't  do  work  enough.  Nobody 
speaks  kindly  to  me,  only  the  Pievano  "  (parish  priest)  "  when 
I  go  to  confession.  And  the  men  in  the  Mercato  laugh  at  me 
and  make  fun  of  me.  Nobody  ever  kissed  me  and  spoke  to 
me  as  you  do;  just  as  I  talk  to  my  little  black-faced  kid, 
because  I'm  very  fond  of  it." 

It  seemed  not  to  have  entered  Tessa's  mind  that  there  was 
any  change  in  Tito's  appearance  since  the  morning  he  begged 
the  milk  from  her,  and  that  he  looked  now  like  a  personage 
for  whom  she  must  summon  her  little  stock  of  reverent  words 
and  signs.  He  had  impressed  her  too  differently  from  any 
human  being  who  had  ever  come  near  her  before,  for  her  to 
make  any  comparison  of  details  ;  she  took  no  note  of  his  dress ; 
he  was  simply  a  voice  and  a  face  to  her,  something  come  from 
Paradise  into  a  world  where  most  things  seemed  hard  and 
angry ;  and  she  prattled  with  as  little  restraint  as  if  he  had 
been  an  imaginary  companion  born  of  her  own  loviugness  and 
the  sunshine. 

They  had  now  reached  the  Prato,  which  at  that  time  was  a 
large  open  space  within  the  walls,  where  the  Florentine  youth 
played  at  their  favorite  Calcio  —  a  peculiar  kind  of  football  — 
and  otherwise  exercised  themselves.  At  this  midday  time  it 
was  forsaken  and  quiet  to  the  very  gates,  where  a  tent  had 


100  ROMOLA. 

been  erected  in  preparation  for  the  race.  On  the  border  of 
this  wide  meadow,  Tito  paused  and  said,  — 

"  Now,  Tessa,  you  will  not  be  frightened  if  I  leave  you  to 
walk  the  rest  of  the  way  by  yourself.  Addio  !  Shall  I  come 
and  buy  a  cup  of  milk  from  you  in  the  Mercato  to-morrow 
morning,  to  see  that  you  are  quite  safe  ?  " 

He  added  this  question  in  a  soothing  tone,  as  he  saw  her  eyes 
widening  sorrowfully,  and  the  corners  of  her  mouth  falling. 
She  said  nothing  at  first ;  she  only  opened  her  apron  and  looked 
down  at  her  apricots  and  sweetmeats.  Then  she  looked  up  at 
him  again  and  said  complainingly,  — 

"  I  thought  you  would  have  some,  and  we  could  sit  down 
under  a  tree  outside  the  gate,  and  eat  them  together." 

"  Tessa,  Tessa,  you  little  siren,  you  would  ruin  me,"  said  Tito, 
laughing,  and  kissing  both  her  cheeks.  "  I  ought  to  have  been 
in  the  Via  de'  Bardi  long  ago.  No  !  I  must  go  back  now  ;  you 
are  in  no  danger.     There  — I'll  take  an  apricot.     Addio  !"' 

He  had  already  stepped  two  yards  from  her  when  he  said 
the  last  word.  Tessa  could  not  have  spoken ;  she  was  pale, 
and  a  great  sob  was  rising ;  but  she  turned  round  as  if  she 
felt  there  was  no  hope  for  her,  and  stepped  on,  holding  her 
apron  so  forgetfully  that  the  apricots  began  to  roll  out  on  the 
grass. 

Tito  could  not  help  looking  after  her,  and  seeing  her  shoul- 
ders rise  to  the  bursting  sob,  and  the  apricots  fall  — could  not 
help  going  after  her  and  picking  them  up.  It  was  very  hard 
upon  him  :  he  was  a  long  way  off  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  and  very 
near  to  Tessa. 

"  See,  my  silly  one,"  he  said,  picking  up  the  apricots. 
'"'  Come,  leave  off  crying,  I  will  go  with  you,  and  we'll  sit 
down  under  the  tree.  Come,  I  don't  like  to  see  you  cry ;  but 
you  know  I  must  go  back  some  time." 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  they  found  a  great  plane-tree  not  far 
outside  the  gates,  and  they  sat  down  under  it,  and  all  the  feast 
was  spread  out  on  Tessa's  lap,  she  leaning  with  her  back  against 
the  trunk  of  the  tree,  and  he  stretched  opposite  to  her,  resting 
his  elbows  on  the  rough  green  growth  cherished  by  the  shade, 
while  the  sunlight  stole  through  the  boughs  and  played  about 
them  like  a  winged  thing.  Tessa's  face  was  all  contentment 
again,  and  the  taste  of  the  apricots  and  sweetmeats  seemed 
very  good. 

"  You  pretty  bird !  "  said  Tito,  looking  at  her  as  she  sat 
eying  the  remains  of  the  feast  with  an  evident  mental  debate 
about  saving  them,  siiice  he  had  said  he  would  not  have  any 


UNDER    THE  PLANE-TREE.  101 

more.  "To  think  of  any  one  scolding  you!  What  sins  do 
you  tell  of  at  confession,  Tessa  ?  " 

"  Oh,  a  great  many.  I  am  often  naughty.  I  don't  like 
work,  and  I  can't  help  being  idle,  though  I  know  I  shall  be 
beaten  and  scolded  ;  and  I  give  the  mules  the  best  fodder  when 
nobody  sees  me,  and  then  when  the  Madre  is  angry  I  say  I 
didn't  do  it,  and  that  makes  me  frightened  at  the  devil.  I 
think  the  conjurer  was  the  devil.  I  am  not  so  frightened 
after  I've  been  to  confession.  And  see,  I've  got  a  Breve  here 
that  a  good  father  who  came  to  Prato  preaching  this  Easter, 
blessed  and  gave  us  all."  Here  Tessa  drew  from  her  bosom 
a  tiny  bag  carefully  fastened  up.  "  And  I  think  the  holy 
Madonna  will  take  care  of  me ;  she  looks  as  if  she  would ; 
and  perhaps  if  I  wasn't  idle,  she  wouldn't  let  me  be  beaten." 

"  If  they  are  so  cruel  to  you,  Tessa,  shouldn't  you  like  to 
leave  them,  and  go  and  live  with  a  beautiful  lady  who  would 
be  kind  to  you,  if  she  would  have  you  to  wait  upon  her  ?  " 

Tessa  seemed  to  hold  her  breath  for  a  moment  or  two.  Then 
she  said  doubtfully,  "  I  don't  know," 

"  Then  should  you  like  to  be  viy  little  servant,  and  live  with 
me  ?  "  said  Tito,  smiling.  He  meant  no  more  than  to  see  what 
sort  of  pretty  look  and  answer  she  would  give. 

There  was  a  flush  of  joy  immediately.  "  Will  you  take  me 
with  you  now  ?  Ah  !  I  shouldn't  go  home  and  be  beaten 
then."  She  paused  a  little  while,  and  then  added  more  doubt- 
fully, "But  I  should  like  to  fetch  my  black-faced  kid." 

"  Yes,  you  must  go  back  to  your  kid,  my  Tessa,"  said  Tito, 
rising,  "  and  I  must  go  the  other  way." 

*•  By  Jupiter  ! "  he  added,  as  he  went  from  under  the  shade 
of  the  tree,  "  it  is  not  a  pleasant  time  of  day  to  walk  from 
here  to  the  Via  de'  Bardi ;  I  am  more  inclined  to  lie  down  and 
sleep  in  this  shade." 

It  ended  so.  Tito  had  an  unconquerable  aversion  to  any- 
thing unpleasant,  even  when  an  object  very  much  loved  and 
desired  was  on  the  other  side  of  it.  He  had  risen  early  ;  had 
waited  ;  had  seen  sights,  and  had  been  already  walking  in  the 
sun :  he  was  inclined  for  a  siesta,  and  inclined  all  the  more 
because  little  Tessa  was  there,  and  seemed  to  make  the  air 
softer.  He  lay  down  on  the  grass  again,  putting  his  cap  under 
his  head  on  a  green  tuft  by  the  side  of  Tessa.  That  was  not 
quite  comfortable ;  so  he  moved  again,  and  asked  Tessa  to  let 
him  rest  his  head  against  her  lap  ;  and  in  that  way  he  soon 
fell  asleep.  Tessa  sat  quiet  as  a  dove  on  its  nest,  just  ven- 
turing, when  he  was  fast  asleep,  to  touch  the  wonderful  dark 


102  ROMOLA. 

curls  that  fell  backward  from  his  ear.  She  was  too  happy  to 
go  to  sleep  —  too  happy  to  think  that  Tito  would  wake  up,  and 
that  then  he  would  leave  her,  and  she  must  go  home.  It  takes 
very  little  water  to  make  a  perfect  pool  for  a  tiny  fish,  where 
it  will  find  its  world  and  paradise  all  in  one,  and  never  have  a 
presentiment  of  the  dry  bank.  The  fretted  summer  shade  and 
stillness,  and  the  gentle  breathing  of  some  loved  life  near  —  it 
would  be  paradise  to  us  all,  if  eager  thought,  the  strong  angel 
with  the  implacable  brow,  had  not  long  since  closed  the  gates. 

It  really  was  a  long  while  before  the  waking  came  —  before 
the  long  dark  eyes  opened  at  Tessa,  first  with  a  little  surprise, 
and  then  with  a  smile,  which  was  soon  quenched  by  some  pre- 
occupying thought.  Tito's  deeper  sleep  had  broken  into  a 
doze,  in  which  he  felt  himself  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  explaining 
his  failure  to  appear  at  the  appointed  time.  The  clear  images 
of  that  doze  urged  him  to  start  up  at  once  to  a  sitting  pos- 
ture, and  as  he  stretched  his  arms  and  shook  his  cap,  he 
said,  — 

"  Tessa,  little  one,  you  have  let  me  sleep  too  long.  My 
hunger  and  the  shadows  together  tell  me  that  the  sun  has 
done  much  travel  since  I  fell  asleep.  I  must  lose  no  more 
time.  Addio,"  he  ended,  patting  her  cheek  with  one  hand, 
and  settling  his  cap  with  the  other. 

She  said  nothing,  but  there  were  signs  in  her  face  which 
made  him  speak  again  in  as  serious  and  as  chiding  a  tone  as 
he  could  command,  — 

*'  Now,  Tessa,  you  must  not  cry.  I  shall  be  angry  ;  I  shall 
not  love  you  if  you  cry.  You  must  go  home  to  your  black- 
faced  kid,  or  if  you  like  you  may  go  back  to  the  gate  and  see 
the  horses  start.  But  I  can  stay  with  you  no  longer,  and  if 
you  cry,  I  shall  think  you  are  troublesome  to  me." 

The  rising  tears  were  checked  by  terror  at  this  change  in 
Tito's  voice.  Tessa  turned  very  pale,  and  sat  in  trembling 
silence,  with  her  blue  eyes  widened  by  arrested  tears. 

"  Look  now,"  Tito  went  on,  soothingly,  opening  the  wallet 
that  hung  at  his  belt,  "  here  is  a  pretty  charm  that  I  have  had 
a  long  while  —  ever  since  I  was  in  Sicily,  a  country  a  long 
way  off." 

His  wallet  had  many  little  matters  in  it  mingled  with  small 
coins,  and  he  had  the  usual  difficulty  in  laying  his  finger  on 
the  right  thing.  He  unhooked  his  wallet,  and  turned  out  the 
contents  on  Tessa's  lap.     Among  them  was  his  onyx  ring. 

''  Ah,  my  ring  !  "  he  exclaimed,  slipping  it  on  the  forefinger 
of  his  right  hand.     "  I  forgot  to  put  it  on  again  this  morning. 


UNDER    THE   PLANE-TREE.  103 

Strange,  I  never  missed  it !  See,  Tessa,"  he  added,  as  he 
spread  out  the  smaller  articles,  and  selected  the  one  he  was  in 
search  of.  "  See  this  pretty  little  pointed  bit  of  red  coral  — 
like  your  goat's  horn,  is  it  not  ?  —  and  here  is  a  hole  in  it,  so 
you  can  put  it  on  the  cord  round  your  neck  along  with  your 
Breve,  and  then  the  evil  spirits  can't  hurt  you :  if  you  ever 
see  them  coming  in  the  shadow  round  the  corner,  point  this 
little  coral  horn  at  them,  and  they  will  run  away.  It  is  a 
'  buona  fortuna,'  and  will  keep  you  from  harm  when  I  am  not 
with  you.     Come,  undo  the  cord." 

Tessa  obeyed  with  a  tranquillizing  sense  that  life  was  going 
to  be  something  quite  new,  and  that  Tito  would  be  with  her 
often.  All  who  remember  their  childhood  remember  the 
strange  vague  sense,  when  some  new  experience  came,  that 
everything  else  was  going  to  be  changed,  and  that  there  would 
be  no  lapse  into  the  old  monotony.  So  the  bit  of  coral  was 
hung  beside  the  tiny  bag  with  the  scrap  of  scrawled  parch- 
ment in  it,  and  Tessa  felt  braver. 

"  And  now  you  will  give  me  a  kiss,"  said  Tito,  economizing 
time  by  speaking  while  he  swept  in  the  contents  of  the  wallet 
and  hung  it  at  his  waist  again,  *'  and  look  happy  like  a  good 
girl,  and  then  "  — 

But  Tessa  had  obediently  put  forward  her  lips  in  a  moment, 
and  kissed  his  cheek  as  he  hung  down  his  head. 

"  Oh,  you  pretty  pigeon  ! "  cried  Tito,  laughing,  pressing 
her  round  cheeks  with  his  hands  and  crushing  her  features 
together  so  as  to  give  them  a  general  impartial  kiss. 

Then  he  started  up  and  walked  away,  not  looking  round  till 
he  was  ten  yards  from  her,  when  he  just  turned  and  gave  a 
parting  beck.  Tessa  was  looking  after  him,  but  he  could  see 
that  she  was  making  no  signs  of  distress.  It  was  enough  for 
Tito  if  she  did  not  cry  while  he  was  present.  The  softness  of 
his  nature  required  that  all  sorrow  should  be  hidden  away  from 
him. 

"  I  wonder  when  Eomola  will  kiss  my  cheek  in  that  way  ?  " 
thought  Tito,  as  he  walked  along.  It  seemed  a  tiresome  dis- 
tance now,  and  he  almost  wished  he  had  not  been  so  soft- 
hearted, or  so  tempted  to  linger  in  the  shade.  No  other 
excuse  was  needed  to  Bardo  and  Romola  than  saying  simply 
that  he  had  been  unexpectedly  hindered ;  he  felt  confident 
their  proud  delicacy  would  inquire  no  farther.  He  lost  no 
time  in  getting  to  Ognissanti,  and  hastily  taking  some  food 
there,  he  crossed  the  Arno  by  the  Ponte  alia  Carraja,  and 
made  his  way  as  directly  as  possible  towards  the  Via  de'  Bardi. 


104  ROMOLA. 

But  it  was  the  hour  when  all  the  world  who  meant  to  be  in 
particularly  good  time  to  see  the  Corso  were  returning  from 
the  Borghi,  or  villages  just  outside  the  gates,  where  they  had 
dined  and  reposed  themselves  ;  and  the  thoroughfares  leading 
to  the  bridges  were  of  course  the  issues  towards  which  the 
stream  of  sightseers  tended.  Just  as  Tito  reached  the  Ponte 
Vecchio  and  the  entrance  of  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  he  was  sud- 
denly urged  back  towards  the  angle  of  the  intersecting  streets. 
A  company  on  horseback,  coming  from  the  Via  Guicciardini, 
and  turning  up  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  had  compelled  the  foot- 
passengers  to  recede  hurriedly.  Tito  had  been  walking,  as  his 
manner  was,  with  the  thumb  of  his  right  hand  resting  in  his 
belt ;  and  as  he  was  thus  forced  to  pause,  and  was  looking 
carelessly  at  the  passing  cavaliers,  he  felt  a  very  thin  cold 
hand  laid  on  his.  He  started  round,  and  saw  the  Dominican 
friar  whose  upturned  face  had  so  struck  him  in  the  morning. 
Seen  closer,  the  face  looked  more  evidently  worn  by  sickness 
and  not  by  age ;  and  again  it  brought  some  strong  but  indefi- 
nite reminiscences  to  Tito. 

"  Pardon  me,  but  —  from  your  face  and  your  ring  "  —  said 
the  friar,  in  a  faint  voice,  "  is  not  your  name  Tito  Melema  ?  " 

"Yes,"  said  Tito,  also  speaking  faintly,  doubly  jarred  b}^ 
the  cold  touch  and  the  mystery.  He  was  not  apprehensive  or 
timid  through  his  imagination,  but  through  his  sensations  and 
perceptions  he  could  easily  be  made  to  shrink  and  turn  pale 
like  a  maiden. 

"Then  I  shall  fulfil  my  commission." 

The  friar  put  his  hand  under  his  scapulary,  and  drawing 
out  a  small  linen  bag  which  hung  round  his  neck,  took  from 
it  a  bit  of  parchment,  doubled  and  stuck  firmly  together  witii 
some  black  adhesive  substance,  and  placed  it  in  Tito's  hand. 
On  the  outside  was  written  in  Italian,  in  a  small  but  distinct 
character,  — 

"  Tito  Melema,  aged  ticenty-three,  with  a  dark,  beautiful  face, 
long  dark  curls,  the  brightest  smile,  and  a  large  onyx  ring  on 
his  right  forefinger.''^ 

Tito  did  not  look  at  the  friar,  but  tremblingly  broke  open 
the  bit  of  parchment.     Inside,  the  words  were,  — 

"  /  am  sold  for  a  slave  :  I  think  they  are  going  to  take  me  to 
Antioch.      The  gems  alone  %vill  serve  to  ransom  me/' 

Tito  looked  round  at  the  friar,  but  could  only  ask  a  question 
with  his  eyes. 

"  I  had  it  at  Corinth,"  the  friar  said,  speaking  with  difficulty, 
like  one  whose  small  strength  had  been  overtaxed  —  "  I  had  it 
from  a  man  wlio  was  dying." 


TITO'S  DILEMMA.  105 

"  He  is  dead,  then  ?  "  said  Tito,  with  a  bounding  of  the 
heart. 

"  Not  the  writer.  The  man  who  gave  it  me  was  a  pilgrim, 
like  myself,  to  whom  the  writer  had  intrusted  it,  because  he 
was  journe3dng  to  Italy." 

"  You  know  the  contents  ?  " 

"1  do  not  know  them,  but  I  conjecture  them.  Your  friend 
is  in  slavery  :  you  will  go  and  release  him.  But  I  am  unable 
to  talk  now."  The  friar,  whose  voice  had  become  feebler  and 
feebler,  sank  down  on  the  stone  bench  against  the  wall  from 
which  he  had  risen  to  touch  Tito's  hand,  adding,  — 

"  I  am  at  San  Marco ;  my  name  is  Fra  Luca." 


CHAPTER  XI. 

TITO's    DILEMMA. 

When  Fra  Luca  had  ceased  to  speak,  Tito  still  stood  by 
him  in  irresolution,  and  it  was  not  till,  the  pressure  of  the 
passengers  being  removed,  the  friar  rose  and  walked  slowly 
into  the  church  of  Santa  Felicita,  that  Tito  also  went  on  his 
way  along  the  Via  de'  Bardi. 

"If  this  monk  is  a  Florentine,"  he  said  to  himself;  "if  he 
is  going  to  remain  at  Florence,  everything  must  be  disclosed." 
He  felt  that  a  new  crisis  had  come,  but  he  was  not,  for  all 
that,  too  evidently  agitated  to  pay  his  visit  to  Bardo,  and 
apologize  for  his  previous  non-appearance.  Tito's  talent  for 
concealment  was  being  fast  developed  into  something  less 
neutral.  It  was  still  possible  —  perhaps  it  might  be  inevitable 
—  for  him  to  accept  frankly  the  altered  conditions,  and  avow 
Baldassarre's  existence ;  but  hardly  without  casting  an  un- 
pleasant light  backward  on  his  original  reticence  as  studied 
equivocation  in  order  to  avoid  the  fulfilment  of  a  secretly 
recognized  claim,  to  say  nothing  of  his  quiet  settlement  of 
himself  and  investment  of  his  florins,  when,  it  would  be  clear, 
his  benefactor's  fate  had  not  been  certified.  It  was  at  least 
provisionally  wise  to  act  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  and  for 
the  present  he  would  suspend  decisive  thought ;  there  was 
all  the  night  for  meditation,  and  no  one  would  know  the 
precise  moment  at  which  he  had  received  the  letter. 

So  he  entered  the  room  on  the  second  story  —  where  Romola 


106  ROMOLA. 

and  her  father  sat  among  the  parchment  and  the  marble,  aloof 
from  the  life  of  the  streets  on  holidays  as  well  as  on  common 
days  —  with  a  face  only  a  little  less  bright  than  usi^al,  from 
regret  at  appearing  so  late :  a  regret  which  wanted  no  testi- 
mony, since  he  had  given  up  the  sight  of  the  Corso  in  order  to 
express  it ;  and  then  set  himself  to  throw  extra  animation  into 
the  evening,  though  all  the  while  his  consciousness  was  at  work 
like  a  machine  with  complex  action,  leaving  deposits  quite 
distinct  from  the  line  of  talk ;  and  by  the  time  he  descended 
the  stone  stairs  and  issued  from  the  grim  door  in  the  starlight, 
his  mind  had  really  reached  a  new  stage  in  its  formation  of  a 
purpose. 

And  when,  the  next  day,  after  he  was  free  from  his  pro- 
fessorial work,  he  turned  up  the  Via  del  Cocomero  towards 
the  convent  of  San  Marco,  his  purpose  was  fully  shaped.  He 
was  going  to  ascertain  from  Fra  Luca  precisely  how  much  he 
conjectured  of  the  truth,  and  on  what  grounds  he  conjectured 
it ;  and,  further,  how  long  he  was  to  remain  at  San  Marco. 
And  on  that  fuller  knowledge  he  hoped  to  mould  a  statement 
which  would  in  any  case  save  him  from  the  necessity  of 
quitting  Florence.  Tito  had  never  had  occasion  to  fabricate 
an  ingenious  lie  before:  the  occasion  was  come  now — the 
occasion  which  circumstance  never  fails  to  beget  on  tacit 
falsity  ;  and  his  ingenuity  was  ready.  For  he  had  convinced 
himself  that  he  was  not  tjound  to  go  in  search  of  Baldassarre. 
He  had  once  said  that  on  a  fair  assurance  of  his  father's 
existence  and  whereabout,  he  would  unhesitatingly  go  after 
him.  But,  after  all,  ivhy  was  he  bound  to  go  ?  What,  looked 
at  closely,  was  the  end  of  all  life,  but  to  extract  the  utmost 
sum  of  pleasure  ?  And  was  not  his  own  blooming  life  a 
promise  of  incomparably  more  pleasure,  not  for  himself  only, 
but  for  others,  than  the  withered  wintry  life  of  a  man  who 
was  past  the  time  of  keen  enjoyment,  and  whose  ideas  had 
stiffened  into  barren  rigidity  ?  Those  ideas  had  all  been  sown 
in  the  fresh  soil  of  Tito's  mind,  and  were  lively  germs  there : 
that  was  the  proper  order  of  things  —  the  order  of  nature, 
which  treats  all  maturity  as  a  mere  nidus  for  youth. 
Baldassarre  had  done  his  work,  had  had  his  draught  of  life  : 
Tito  said  it  was  his  turn  now. 

And  the  prospect  was  so  vague :  —  "I  think  they  are  going 
to  take  me  to  Antioch : "  here  was  a  vista !  After  a  long 
voyage,  to  spend  months,  perhaps  years,  in  a  search  for  which 
even  now  there  was  no  guarantee  that  it  would  not  prove 
vain :  and  to  leave  behind  at  starting,  a  life  of  distinction  and 


TITO'S  DILEMMA.  107 

love :  and  to  find,  if  he  found  anything,  the  old  exacting 
companionship  Avhich  was  known  by  rote  beforehand.  Cei 
tainly  the  gems  and  therefore  the  florins  were,  in  a  sense, 
Baldassarre's :  in  the  narrow  sense  by  which  the  right  of 
possession  is  determined  in  ordinary  affairs  ;  but  in  that  large 
and  more  radically  natural  view  by  which  the  world  belongs 
to  youth  and  strength,  they  were  rather  his  who  could  extract 
the  most  pleasure  out  of  them.  That,  he  was  conscious,  was 
not  the  sentiment  which  the  complicated  play  of  human 
feelings  had  engendered  in  society.  The  men  around  him 
would  expect  that  he  should  immediately  apply  those  florins 
to  his  benefactor's  rescue.  But  what  was  the  sentiment  of 
society  ?  —  a  mere  tangle  of  anomalous  traditions  and 
opinions,  which  no  wise  man  would  take  as  a  guide,  except  so 
far  as  his  own  comfort  was  concerned.  Not  that  he  cared  for 
the  florins  save  perhaps  for  Komola's  sake  :  he  would  give  up 
the  florins  readily  enough.  It  was  the  joy  that  was  due  to 
him  and  was  close  to  his  lips,  which  he  felt  he  was  not  bound 
to  thrust  away  from  him  and  so  travel  on,  thirsting.  Any 
maxims  that  required  a  man  to  fling  away  the  good  that  Avas 
needed  to  make  existence  sweet,  were  only  the  lining  of 
human  selfishness  turned  outward :  they  were  made  by  men 
who  wanted  others  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  their  sake.  He 
would  rather  that  Baldassarre  should  not  suffer :  he  liked  no 
one  to  suffer ;  but  could  any  philosophy  prove  to  him  that  he 
was  bound  to  care  for  another's  suffering  more  than  for  his 
own  ?  To  do  so  he  must  have  loved  Baldassarre  devotedly, 
and  he  did  not  love  him  :  was  that  his  own  fault  ?  Gratitude  ! 
seen  closely,  it  made  no  valid  claim :  his  father's  life  would 
have  been  dreary  without  him :  are  we  convicted  of  a  debt  to 
men  for  the  pleasures  they  give  themselves  ? 

Having  once  begun  to  explain  away  Baldassarre's  claim, 
Tito's  thought  showed  itself  as  active  as  a  virulent  acid, 
eating  its  rapid  way  through  all  the  tissues  of  sentiment. 
His  mind  was  destitute  of  that  dread  which  has  been  errone- 
ously decried  as  if  it  were  nothing  higher  than  a  man's 
animal  care  for  his  own  skin  :  that  awe  of  the  Divine  Nemesis 
which  was  felt  by  religious  pagans,  and,  though  it  took  a  more 
positive  form  under  Christianity,  is  still  felt  by  the  mass  of 
mankind  simply  as  a  vague  fear  at  anything  which  is  called 
wrong-doing.  Such  terror  of  the  unseen  is  so  far  above  mere 
sensual  cowardice  that  it  will  annihilate  that  cowardice  :  it  is 
the  initial  recognition  of  a  moral  law  restraining  desire,  and 
checks   the    hard   bold   scrutiny    of    imperfect   thought   into 


108  ROM  OLA. 

obligations  which  can  never  be  proved  to  have  any  sanctity  in 
the  absence  of  feeling.  "  It  is  good,"  sing  the  old  Eumenides, 
in  ^schylus,  "  that  fear  should  sit  as  the  guardian  of  the 
soul,  forcing  it  into  wisdom  —  good  that  men  should  carry  a 
threatening  shadow  in  their  hearts  under  the  full  sunshine  ; 
else,  hoAv  should  they  learn  to  revere  the  right  ? "  That 
guardianship  may  become  needless ;  but  only  when  all  outward 
law  has  become  needless  —  only  when  duty  and  love  have 
united  in  one  stream  and  made  a  common  force. 

As  Tito  entered  the  outer  cloister  of  San  Marco,  and 
inquired  for  Fra  Luca,  there  was  no  shadowy  presentiment  in 
his  mind :  he  felt  himself  too  cultured  and  sceptical  for  that : 
he  had  been  nurtured  in  contempt  for  the  tales  of  priests 
whose  impudent  lives  were  a  proverb,  and  in  erudite  familiar- 
ity with  disputes  concerning  the  Chief  Good,  which  had  after 
all,  he  considered,  left  it  a  matter  of  taste.  Yet  fear  was  a 
strong  element  in  Tito's  nature  —  the  fear  of  what  he 
believed  or  saw  was  likely  to  rob  him  of  pleasure :  and  he 
had  a  definite  fear  that  Fra  Luca  might  be  the  means  of 
driving  him  from  Florence. 

"  Fra  Luca  ?  ah,  he  is  gone  to  Fiesole  —  to  the  Dominican 
monastery  there.  He  was  taken  on  a  litter  in  the  cool  of  the 
morning.  The  poor  Brother  is  very  ill.  Could  you  leave  a 
message  for  him  ?  " 

This  answer  was  given  by  a  fra  converso,  or  lay  brother, 
whose  accent  told  plainly  that  he  was  a  raw  contadino,  and 
whose  dull  glance  implied  no  curiosity. 

"  Thanks  ;  my  business  can  wait." 

Tito  turned  away  with  a  sense  of  relief.  "  This  friar  is  not 
likely  to  live,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  I  saw  he  was  worn  to  a 
shadow.  And  at  Fiesole  there  will  be  nothing  to  recall  me  to 
his  mind.  Besides,  if  he  should  come  back,  my  explanation 
will  serve  as  well  then  as  now.  But  I  wish  I  knew  what  it 
was  that  his  face  recalled  to  me." 


THE  PRIZE  IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  109 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE    PRIZE    IS    NEARLY    GRASPED. 

Tito  walked  along  with  a  light  step,  for  the  immediate  fear 
had  vanished ;  the  usual  joyousness  of  his  disposition  re- 
assumed  its  predominance,  and  he  was  going  to  see  Romola. 
Yet  Romola's  life  seemed  an  image  of  that  loving,  pitying 
devotedness,  that  patient  endurance  of  irksome  tasks,  from 
which  he  had  shrunk  and  excused  himself.  But  he  was  not 
out  of  love  with  goodness,  or  prepared  to  plunge  into  vice  :  he 
was  in  his  fresh  youth,  with  soft  pulses  for  all  charm  and  love- 
liness ;  he  had  still  a  healthy  appetite  for  ordinary  human  joys, 
and  the  poison  could  only  work  by  degrees.  He  had  sold  him- 
self to  evil,  but  at  present  life  seemed  so  nearly  the  same  to 
him  that  he  was  not  conscious  of  the  bond.  He  meant  all 
things  to  go  on  as  they  had  done  before,  both  within  and  with- 
out him :  he  meant  to  win  golden  opinions  by  meritorious 
exertion,  by  ingenious  learning,  by  amiable  compliance :  he 
was  not  going  to  do  anything  that  would  throw  him  out  of 
harmony  with  the  beings  he  cared  for.  And  he  cared  su- 
premely for  Romola ;  he  wished  to  have  her  for  his  beautiful 
and  loving  wife.  There  might  be  a  wealthier  alliance  within 
the  ultimate  reach  of  successful  accomplishments  like  his,  but 
there  was  no  woman  in  all  Florence  like  Romola.  When  she 
was  near  him,  and  looked  at  him  with  her  sincere  hazel  eyes, 
he  was  subdued  by  a  delicious  influence  as  strong  and  inevita- 
ble as  those  musical  vibrations  which  take  possession  of  us 
with  a  rhythmic  empire  that  no  sooner  ceases  than  we  desire 
it  to  begin  again. 

As  he  trod  the  stone  stairs,  when  he  was  still  outside  the 
door,  with  no  one  but  Maso  near  him,  the  influence  seemed 
to  have  begun  its  work  by  the  mere  nearness  of  anticipa- 
tion. 

"  Welcome,  Tito  mio,"  said  the  old  man's  voice,  before  Tito 
had  spoken.  There  was  a  new  vigor  in  the  voice,  a  new  cheer- 
fulness in  the  blind  face,  since  that  first  interview  more  than 
two  months  ago.  ''You  have  brought  fresh  manuscript,  doubt- 
less ;  but  since  we  were  talking  last  night  I  have  had  new 


110  ROMOLA. 

ideas :  we  must  take  a  wider  scope  —  we  must  go  back  upon 
our  footsteps." 

Tito,  paying  his  homage  to  Romola  as  he  advanced,  went,  as 
his  custom  was,  straight  to  Bardo's  chair,  and  put  his  hand  in 
the  palm  that  was  lield  to  receive  it,  placing  himself  on  the 
cross-legged  leather  seat  with  scrolled  ends,  close  to  Bardo's 
elbow. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  in  his  gentle  way  ;  "  I  have  brought  the  new 
manuscript,  but  that  can  wait  your  pleasure.  I  have  young 
limbs,  you  know,  and  can  walk  back  up  the  hill  without  anv 

difficulty." 

He  did  not  look  at  Romola  as  he  said  this,  but  he  knew  quite 
well  that  her  eyes  were  fixed  on  him  with  delight. 

"That  is  well  said,  my  son."  Bardo  bad  already  addressed 
Tito  in  this  way  once  or  twice  of  late.  '^'  And  I  perceive  with 
gladness  that  you  do  not  shrink  from  labor,  without  which,  the 
poet  has  wisely  said,  life  has  given  nothing  to  mortals.  It  is 
too  often  the  '  palnia  sine  pulvere,'  the  prize  of  glory  without 
the  dust  of  the  race,  that  attracts  young  ambition.  But  what 
says  the  Greek  ?  '  In  the  morning  of  life,  work  ;  in  the  mid- 
day, give  counsel ;  in  the  evening,  pray,'  It  is  true,  I  might  be 
thought  to  have  reached  that  helpless  evening ;  but  not  so, 
while  I  have  counsel  within  me  which  is  yet  unspoken.  For 
my  mind,  as  I  have  often  said,  was  shut  up  as  by  a  dam ;  the 
plenteous  waters  lay  dark  and  motionless ;  but  3^ou,  my  Tito, 
have  opened  a  duct  for  them,  and  they  rush  forward  with  a 
force  that  surprises  myself.  And  now,  what  I  want  is,  that 
we  should  go  over  our  preliminary  ground  again,  with  a  wider 
scheme  of  comment  and  illustration :  otherwise  I  may  lose  op- 
portunities which  I  now  see  retrospectively,  and  which  ma}^ 
never  occur  again.     You  mark  what  I  am  saying,  Tito  ?  " 

He  had  just  stoo])ed  to  reach  his  manuscript,  which  had 
rolled  down,  and  Bardo's  jealous  ear  was  alive  to  the  slight 
movement. 

Tito  might  have  been  excused  for  shrugging  his  shoulders  at 
the  prospect  before  him,  but  he  was  not  naturally  impatient ; 
moreover,  he  had  been  bred  up  in  that  laborious  erudition,  at 
once  minute  and  copious,  which  was  the  chief  intellectual  task 
of  the  age  ;  and  with  Romola  near,  he  was  floated  along  by 
waves  of  agreeable  sensation  that  made  everything  seem 
easy. 

"  Assuredly,"  he  said  ;  "  you  wish  to  enlarge  your  comments 
on  certain  passages  we  have  cited." 

"Not  only  so;  I  wish  to  introduce  an  occasional  excursuSf 


THE  PRIZE  IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  Ill 

where  we  have  noticed  an  author  to  whom  I  have  given  special 
study ;  for  I  may  die  too  soon  to  achieve  any  separate  work. 
And  this  is  not  a  time  for  scholarly  integrity  and  well-sifted 
learning  to  lie  idle,  when  it  is  not  only  rash  ignorance  that  we 
have  to  fear,  but  when  there  are  men  like  Calderino,  who,  as 
Poliziauo  has  well  shown,  have  recourse  to  impudent  falsities 
of  citation  to  serve  the  ends  of  their  vanity  and  secure  a 
triumph  to  their  own  mistakes.  Wherefore,  my  Tito,  I  think 
it  not  well  that  we  should  let  slip  the  occasion  that  lies  under 
our  hands.  And  now  we  will  turn  back  to  the  point  where  we 
have  cited  the  passage  from  Thucydides,  and  I  wish  you,  by 
way  of  preliminary,  to  go  with  me  through  all  my  notes  on 
the  Latin  translation  made  by  Lorenzo  Valla,  for  which  the 
incomparable  Pope  ISTicholas  V.  —  with  whose  personal  notice 
1  was  honored  while  I  was  yet  young,  and  when  he  was  still 
Thomas  of  Sarzana  —  paid  him  (I  say  not  unduly)  the  sum  of 
five  hundred  gold  scudi.  But  inasmuch  as  Valla,  though 
otherwise  of  dubious  fame,  is  held  in  high  honor  for  his  severe 
scholarship,  whence  the  epigrammatist  has  jocosely  said  of 
him  that  since  he  went  among  the  shades,  Pluto  himself  has 
not  dared  to  speak  in  the  ancient  languages,  it  is  the  more 
needful  that  his  name  should  not  be  as  a  stamp  warranting 
false  wares ;  and  therefore  I  would  introduce  an  excursus  on 
Thucydides,  wherein  my  castigations  of  Valla's  text  may  find 
a  fitting  place.  My  Romola,  thou  wilt  reach  the  needful  vol- 
umes —  thou  knowest  them  —  on  the  fifth  shelf  of  the  cab- 
inet." 

Tito  rose  at  the  same  moment  with  Eomola,  saying,  "  I  will 
reach  them,  if  you  will  point  them  out,"  and  followed  her 
hastily  into  the  adjoining  small  room  where  the  walls  were 
also  covered  with  ranges  of  books  in  perfect  order. 

"  There  they  are,"  said  Romola,  pointing  upward  ;  ''  every 
book  is  just  where  it  was  when  my  father  ceased  to  see  them." 
Tito  stood  by  her  without  hastening  to  reach  the  books. 
They  had  never  been  in  this  room  together  before. 

"  I  hope,"  she  continued,  turning  her  eyes  full  on  Tito  with 
a  look  of  grave  confidence  —  "I  hope  he  will  not  weary  you  ; 
this  work  makes  him  so  happy." 

"  And  me  too,  Romola —  if  you  will  only  let  me  say,  1  love 
you  —  if  you  will  only  think  me  worth  loving  a  little." 

His  speech  was  the  softest  murmur,  and  the  dark  beautiful 
face,  nearer  to  hers  than  it  had  ever  been  before,  was  looking 
at  her  with  beseeching  tenderness. 

"I  do  love  you,"  murmured  Romola j  she  looked  at  him 


112  ROMOLA. 

■with  the  same  simple  majesty  as  ever,  but  her  voice  had  never 
in  her  life  before  sunk  to  that  murmur.  It  seemed  to  them 
both  that  they  were  looking  at  each  other  a  long  while  before 
her  lips  moved  again ;  yet  it  was  but  a  moment  till  she  said, 
"  1  know  noio  what  it  is  to  be  happy." 

The  faces  just  met,  and  the  dark  curls  mingled  for  an  in- 
stant with  the  rippling  gold.  Quick  as  lightning  after  that, 
Tito  set  his  foot  on  a  projecting  ledge  of  the  book-shelves  and 
reached  down  the  needful  volumes.  They  were  both  con- 
tented to  be  silent  and  separate,  for  that  first  blissful  experi- 
ence of  mutual  consciousness  was  all  the  more  exquisite  for 
being  unperturbed  by  immediate  sensation. 

It  had  all  been  as  rapid  as  the  irreversible  mingling  of 
waters,  for  even  the  eager  and  jealous  Bardo  had  not  become 
impatient. 

"  You  have  the  volumes,  my  Romola  ?  "  the  old  man  said, 
as  they  came  near  him  again.  "  And  now  you  will  get  your 
pen  ready ;  for,  as  Tito  marks  off  the  scholia  we  determine  on 
extracting,  it  will  be  well  for  you  to  copy  them  without  delay 
—  numbering  them  carefully,  mind,  to  correspond  with  the 
numbers  in  the  text  which  he  will  write." 

Romola  always  had  some  task  which  gave  her  a  share  in 
this  joint  work.  Tito  took  his  stand  at  the  leggio,  where  he 
both  wrote  and  read,  and  she  placed  herself  at  a  table  just  in 
front  of  him,  where  she  was  ready  to  give  into  her  father's 
hands  anything  that  he  might  happen  to  want,  or  relieve  him 
of  a  volume  that  he  had  done  with.  They  had  always  been 
in  that  position  since  the  work  began,  yet  on  this  day  it 
seemed  new ;  it  was  so  different  now  for  them  to  be  opposite 
each  other ;  so  different  for  Tito  to  take  a  book  from  her,  as 
she  lifted  it  from  her  father's  knee.  Yet  there  was  no  finesse 
to  secure  an  additional  look  or  touch.  Each  woman  creates  in 
her  own  likeness  the  love-tokens  that  are  offered  to  her  :  and 
Romola's  deep  calm  happiness  encompassed  Tito  like  the  rich 
but  quiet  evening  light  which  dissipates  all  vmrest. 

They  had  been  two  hours  at  their  work,  and  were  just 
desisting  because  of  the  fading  light,  when  the  door  opened, 
and  there  entered  a  figure  strangely  incongruous  with  the 
current  of  their  thoughts  and  Avith  the  suggestions  of  every 
object  around  them.  It  was  the  figure  of  a  short  stout  black- 
eyed  woman  about  fifty,  wearing  a  black  velvet  berretta,  or 
close  cap,  embroidered  with  pearls,  under  which  surprisingly 
massive  black  braids  surmounted  the  little  bulging  forehead, 
*nd  fell  in  rich  plaited  curves  over  the  ears,  while  an  equally 


THE  PRIZE  IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  113 

surprising  carmine  tint  on  the  upper  region  of  the  fat  cheeks 
contrasted  with  the  surrounding  sallowness.  Three  rows  of 
pearls  and  a  lower  necklace  of  gold  reposed  on  the  horizontal 
cushion  of  her  neck ;  the  embroidered  border  of  her  trailing 
black  velvet  gown  and  her  embroidered  long-drooping  sleeves 
of  rose-colored  damask,  were  slightly  faded,  but  they  conveyed 
to  the  initiated  eye  the  satisfactory  assurance  that  they  were 
the  splendid  result  of  six  months'  labor  by  a  skilled  workman, 
and  the  rose-colored  petticoat,  with  its  dimmed  white  fringe 
and  seed-pearl  arabesques,  was  duly  exhibited  in  order  to  sug- 
gest a  similar  pleasing  reflection.  A  handsome  coral  rosary 
hung  from  one  side  of  an  inferential  belt,  which  emerged  into 
certainty  with  a  large  clasp  of  silver  wrought  in  niello  ;  and 
on  the  other  side,  where  the  belt  again  became  inferential, 
hung  a  scarsella,  or  large  purse,  of  crimson  velvet,  stitched 
with  pearls.  Her  little  fat  right  hand,  which  looked  as  if  it 
had  been  made  of  paste,  and  had  risen  out  of  shape  under 
partial  baking,  held  a  small  book  of  devotions,  also  splendid 
with  velvet,  pearls,  and  silver. 

The  figure  was  already  too  familiar  to  Tito  to  be  startling, 
for  Monna  Brigida  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  Bardo's,  being 
excepted  from  the  sentence  of  banishment  passed  on  feminine 
triviality,  on  the  ground  of  her  cousinship  to  his  dead  wife 
and  her  early  care  for  Eomola,  who  now  looked  round  at  her 
with  an  affectionate  smile,  and  rose  to  draw  the  leather  seat 
to  a  due  distance  from  her  father's  chair,  that  the  coming  gush 
of  talk  might  not  be  too  near  his  ear. 

"  La  cugina  ?  "  said  Bardo,  interrogatively,  detecting  the 
short  steps  and  the  sweeping  drapery. 

"  Yes,  it  is  your  cousin,"  said  Monna  Brigida,  in  an  alert 
voice,  raising  her  fingers  smilingly  at  Tito,  and  then  lifting 
up  her  face  to  be  kissed  by  Romola.  "  Always  the  trouble- 
some cousin  breaking  in  on  your  wisdom,"  she  went  on,  seat- 
ing herself  and  beginning  to  fan  herself  with  the  white  veil 
hanging  over  her  arm.  "  Well,  well ;  if  I  didn't  bring  you 
some  news  of  the  world  now  and  then,  I  do  believe  you'd 
forget  there  was  anything  in  life  but  these  mouldy  ancients, 
who  want  sprinkling  with  holy  water,  if  all  I  hear  about  them 
is  true.  Not  but  what  the  world  is  bad  enough  nowadays, 
for  the  scandals  that  turn  up  under  one's  nose  at  every  corner 
—  1  don't  want  to  hear  and  see  such  things,  biit  one  can't  go 
about  with  one's  head  in  a  bag;  and  it  was  only  yesterday  — 
well,  well,  you  needn't  burst  out  at  me,  Bardo,  I'm  not  going 
to  tell  anything ;  if  I'm  not  as  wise  as  the  three  kings,  I  know 


114  ROM  OLA. 

how  many  legs  go  into  one  boot.  But,  nevertheless,  Florence 
is  a  wicked  city  —  is  it  not  true,  Messer  Tito  ?  for  you  go  into 
the  world.  Not  but  what  one  must  sin  a  little  —  Messer 
Domeneddio  expects  that  of  us,  else  what  are  the  blessed  sac- 
raments for  ?  And  what  I  say  is,  we've  got  to  reverence  the 
saints,  and  not  to  set  ourselves  up  as  if  we  could  be  like  them, 
else  life  would  be  unbearable  ;  as  it  will  be  if  things  go  on 
after  this  new  fashion.  For  what  do  you  think  ?  I've  been  at 
the  wedding  to-day  —  Dianora  Aeciajoli's  with  the  young 
Albizzi  that  there  has  been  so  much  talk  of  —  and  everybody 
wondered  at  its  being  to-day  instead  of  yesterday;  but,  cieli! 
such  a  wedding  as  it  was  might  have  been  put  off  till  the  next 
Quaresima  for  a  penance.  For  there  was  the  bride  looking 
like  a  white  nun  —  not  so  much  as  a  pearl  about  her — and 
the  bridegroom  as  solemn  as  San  Giuseppe.  It's  true !  And 
half  the  people  invited  were  Plagnoni  —  they  call  them 
Piagnoni  ^  now,  these  new  saints  of  Fra  Girolamo's  making. 
And  to  think  of  two  families  like  the  Albizzi  and  the  Acciajoli 
taking  up  such  notions,  when  they  could  afford  to  wear  the 
best !  Well,  well,  they  invited  me  —  but  they  could  do  no 
other,  seeing  my  husband  was  Luca  Antonio's  uncle  by  the 
mother's  side  —  and  a  pretty  time  I  had  of  it  while  we  waited 
under  the  canopy  in  front  of  the  house,  before  they  let  us  in. 
I  couldn't  stand  in  my  clothes,  it  seemed,  without  giving 
offence ;  for  there  was  Monna  Berta,  who  has  had  worse 
secrets  in  her  time  than  any  I  could  tell  of  myself,  looking 
askance  at  me  from  under  her  hood  like  a, pinzochera,^  send  tell- 
ing me  to  read  the  Frate's  book  about  widows,  from  which 
she  had  found  great  guidance.  Holy  Madonna !  it  seems  as  if 
widows  had  nothing  to  do  now  but  to  buy  their  coffins,  and 
think  it  a  thousand  years  till  they  get  into  them,  instead  of 
enjoying  themselves  a  little  when  they've  got  their  hands  free 
for  the  first  time.  And  what  do  you  think  was  the  music  we 
had,  to  make  our  dinner  lively  ?  A  long  discourse  from  Fra 
Domenico  of  San  Marco,  about  the  doctrines  of  their  blessed 
Fra  Girolamo  —  the  three  doctrines  we  are  all  to  get  by  heart ; 
and  he  kept  marking  them  off  on  his  fingers  till  he  made  my 
tiesh  creep  :  and  the  first  is,  Florence,  or  the  Church  —  I  don't 
know  which,  for  first  he  said  one  and  then  the  other  — 
shall  be  scourged  ;  but  if  he  means  the  pestilence,  the  Signory 
ought  to  put  a  stop  to  such  preaching,  for  it's  enough  to  raise 
the  swelling  under  one's   arms  with   fright :  but  then,  after 

1  Funeral  mourners  :  properly,  paid  mourners. 

*  A  Sister  of  the  Third  Order  of  .St.  Franuis:  au  uacloistered  nun. 


THE  PRIZE  IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  115 

that,  he  says  Florence  is  to  be  regenerated  ;  but  what  will  be 
the  good  of  that  when  we're  all  dead  of  the  plague,  or  some- 
thing else  ?  And  then,  the  third  thing,  and  what  he  said 
oftenest,  is,  that  it's  all  to  be  in  our  days  :  and  he  marked  that 
off  on  his  thumb,  till  he  made  me  tremble  like  the  very  jelly 
before  me.  They  had  jellies,  to  be  sure,  with  the  arms  of  the 
Albizzi  and  the  Acciajoli  raised  on  them  in  all  colors  ;  they've 
not  turned  the  world  quite  upside  down  yet.  But  all  their 
talk  is,  that  we  are  to  go  back  to  the  old  ways  :  for  up  starts 
Francesco  Valori,  that  I've  danced  with  in  the  Via  Larga  when 
he  was  a  bachelor  and  as  fond  of  the  Medici  as  anybody,  and 
he  makes  a  speech  about  the  old  times,  before  the  Florentines 
had  left  off  crying  '  Popolo  '  and  begun  to  cry  '  Palle  '  —  as  if 
that  had  anything  to  do  with  a  wedding !  —  and  how  we 
ought  to  keep  to  the  rules  the  Signory  laid  down  Heaven 
knows  when,  that  we  were  not  to  wear  this  and  that,  and  not 
to  eat  this  and  that  —  and  how  our  manners  Avere  corrupted 
and  we  read  bad  books  ;  though  he  can't  say  that  of  me  "  — 

"  Stop,  cousin  ! "  said  Bardo,  in  his  imperious  tone,  for  he 
had  a  remark  to  make,  and  only  desperate  measures  could 
arrest  the  rattling  lengthiness  of  Monna  Brigida's  discourse. 
But  now  she  gave  a  little  start,  pursed  up  her  mouth,  and 
looked  at  him  with  round  eyes. 

"  Francesco  Valori  is  not  altogether  wrong,"  Bardo  went  on. 
"Bernardo,  indeed,  rates  him  not  highly,  and  is  rather  of 
opinion  that  he  christens  private  grudges  by  the  name  of 
public  zeal ;  though  I  must  admit  that  my  good  Bernardo  is 
too  slow  of  belief  in  that  unalloyed  patriotism  which  was 
found  in  all  its  lustre  amongst  the  ancients.  But  it  is  true, 
Tito,  that  our  manners  have  degenerated  somewhat  from  that 
noble  frugality  which,  as  has  been  well  seen  in  the  public  acts 
of  our  citizens,  is  the  parent  of  true  magnificence.  For  men, 
as  I  hear,  will  now  spend  on  the  transient  show  of  a  Giostra 
sums  which  would  suffice  to  found  a  library,  and  confer  a  last- 
ing possession  on  mankind.  Still,  I  conceive  it  remains  true 
of  us  Florentines  that  we  have  more  of  that  magnanimous 
sobriety  which  abhors  a  trivial  lavishness  that  it  may  be 
grandly  open-handed  on  grand  occasions,  than  can  be  found 
in  any  other  city  of  Italy  ;  for  I  understand  that  the  jSTeapoli- 
tan  and  Milanese  courtiers  laugh  at  the  scarcity  of  our  plate,  and 
think  scorn  of  our  great  families  for  borrowing  from  each 
other  that  furniture  of  the  table  at  their  entertainments. 
But  in  the  vain  laughter  of  folly  wisdom  hears  half  its 
applause." 


116  ROMOLA. 

"  Laughter,  indeed ! "  burst  forth  Monna  Brigida  again,  the 
moment  Bardo  paused.  "  If  anybody  wanted  to  hear  laughter 
at  the  wedding  to-day  they  were  disappointed,  for  when  young 
Niccolo  Macchiavelli  tried  to  malve  a  joke,  and  told  stories  out 
of  Franco  Sacchetti's  book,  how  it  was  no  use  for  the  Signoria 
to  make  rules  for  us  women,  because  we  were  cleverer  than  all 
the  painters,  and  architects,  and  doctors  of  logic  in  the  world, 
for  we  could  make  black  look  white,  and  yellow  look  pink,  and 
crooked  look  straight,  and,  if  anything  was  forbidden,  we 
could  find  a  new  name  for  it  —  Holy  Virgin  !  the  Piagnoni 
looked  more  dismal  than  before,  and  somebody  said  Sacchetti's 
book  was  wicked.  Well,  I  don't  read  it  —  they  can't  accuse 
me  of  reading  anything.  Save  me  from  going  to  a  wedding 
again,  if  that's  to  be  the  fashion  ;  for  all  of  us  who  were  not 
Piagnoni  were  as  comfortable  as  wet  chickens.  I  was  never 
caught  in  a  worse  trap  but  once  before,  and  that  was  when  I 
went  to  hear  their  precious  Frate  last  Quaresima  in  San 
Lorenzo.  Perhaps  I  never  told  you  about  it,  Messer  Tito  ?  — 
it  almost  freezes  my  blood  when  I  think  of  it.  How  he  rated 
us  poor  women  !  and  the  men,  too,  to  tell  the  truth,  but  I  didn't 
mind  that  so  much.  He  called  us  cows,  and  lumps  of  flesh, 
and  wantons,  and  mischief-makers  —  and  I  could  just  bear 
that,  for  there  were  plenty  others  more  fleshy  and  spiteful 
than  I  was,  though  every  now  and  then  his  voice  shook  the 
very  bench  under  me  like  a  trumpet ;  but  then  he  came  to  the 
false  hair,  and,  0  misericordia  !  he  made  a  picture  —  I  see  it 
now  —  of  a  young  woman  lying  a  pale  corpse,  and  us  light- 
minded  widows  —  of  course  he  meant  me  as  well  as  the  rest, 
for  I  had  my  plaits  on,  for  if  one  is  getting  old,  one  doesn't 
want  to  look  as  ugly  as  the  Befana^  —  us  widows  rushing  up 
to  the  corpse,  like  bare-pated  vultures  as  we  were,  and  cutting 
off  its  young  dead  hair  to  deck  our  old  heads  with.  Oh,  the 
dreams  I  had  after  that !  And  then  lie  cried,  and  wrung  his 
hands  at  us,  and  I  cried  too.  And  to  go  home,  and  to  take  off 
my  jewels,  this  very  clasp,  and  everything,  and  to  make  them 
into  a  p^icket,  fu  tutfu7io  ;  and  I  was  within  a  hair  of  sending 
them  to  the  Good  Men  of  St.  Martin  to  give  to  the  poor,  but, 
by  Heaven's  mercy,  I  bethought  me  of  going  first  to  my  con- 
fessor, Fra  Cristoforo,  at  Santa  Croce,  and  he  told  me  how  it 
was  all  the  work  of  the  devil,  this  preaching  and  prophesying 
of  their  Fra  Girolamo,  and  the  Dominicans  were  trying  to 
turn  the  world  upside  down,  and  I  was  never  to  go  and  hear 

1  The  name  given  to  the  grotesque  black-faced  figures,  sun|)OS(>d  to  represent  the 
Magi,  carried  about  or  placed  iu  the  wiudows  on  Twellth  Wight,  a  corruptioa  of 
Epifania. 


INTERIOR    OF    THE   CHURCH    OF    SAN    LORENZO 


THE  PRIZE   IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  117 

him  again,  else  I  must  do  penance  for  it ;  for  the  great 
preachers  Fra  Mariano  and  Fra  Menico  had  shown  how  Fra 
Girolamo  preached  lies  —  and  that  was  true,  for  I  heard  them 
both  in  the  Duomo  —  and  how  the  Pope's  dream  of  San 
Francesco  propping  up  the  Church  with  his  arms  was  being 
fulfilled  still,  and  the  Dominicans  were  beginning  to  pull  it 
down.  Well  and  good :  I  went  away  con  Dio,  and  made 
myself  easy.  I  am  not  going  to  be  frightened  by  a  Frate 
Predicatore  again.  And  all  I  say  is,  I  wish  it  hadn't  been  the 
Dominicans  that  poor  Dino  joined  years  ago,  for  then  I  should 
have  been  glad  when  I  heard  them  say  he  was  come  back  "  — 

"  Silenzio ! "  said  Bardo,  in  a  loud  agitated  voice,  while 
Romola  half  started  from  her  chair,  clasped  her  hands,  and 
looked  round  at  Tito,  as  if  now  she  might  appeal  to  him. 
Monna  Brigida  gave  a  little  scream,  and  bit  her  lip. 

"  Donna !  "  said  Bardo,  again,  "  hear  once  more  my  will. 
Bring  no  reports  about  that  name  to  this  house  ;  and  thou, 
Romola,  I  forbid  thee  to  ask.     My  son  is  dead." 

Bardo's  whole  frame  seemed  vibrating  with  passion,  and  no 
one  dared  to  break  silence  again.  Monna  Brigida  lifted  her 
shoulders  and  her  hands  in  mute  dismay  ;  then  she  rose  as 
quietly  as  possible,  gave  many  significant  nods  to  Tito  and 
Romola,  motioning  to  them  that  they  were  not  to  move,  and 
stole  out  of  the  room  like  a  culpable  fat  spaniel  who  has 
barked  unseasonably. 

Meanwhile,  Tito's  quick  mind  had  been  combining  ideas 
with  lightning-like  rapidity.  Bardo's  son  was  not  really  dead, 
then,  as  he  had  supposed :  he  was  a  monk  ;  he  was  "  come 
back : "  and  Fra  Luca  —  yes  !  it  was  the  likeness  to  Bardo  and 
Romola  that  had  made  the  face  seem  half  known  to  him.  If 
he  were  only  dead  at  Fiesole  at  that  moment !  This  impor- 
tunate selfish  wish  inevitably  thrust  itself  before  every  other 
thought.  It  was  true  that  Bardo's  rigid  will  was  a  sufficient 
safeguard  against  any  intercourse  between  Romola  and  her 
brother ;  but  not  against  the  betrayal  of  what  he  knew  to 
others,  especially  when  the  subject  was  suggested  by  the 
coupling  of  Romola's  name  with  that  of  the  very  Tito 
Melema  whose  description  he  had  carried  round  his  neck  as 
an  index.  No !  nothing  but  Fra  Luca's  death  could  remove 
all  danger;  but  his  death  was  highly  probable,  and  after  the 
momentary  shock  of  the  discovery,  Tito  let  his  mind  fall  back 
in  repose  on  that  confident  hope. 

They  had  sat  in  silence,  and  in  a  deepening  twilight,  for 
many  minutes,  when  Romola  ventured  to  say,  — - 


118  ROMOLA. 

"  Shall  I  light  the  lamp,  father,  and  shall  we  go  on  ?  " 

"No,  my  Romola,  we  will  work  no  more  to-night.  Tito, 
come  and  sit  by  me  here." 

Tito  moved  from  the  reading-desk,  and  seated  himself  on 
the  other  side  of  Bardo,  close  to  his  left  elbow. 

"  Come  nearer  to  me,  figliuola  mia,"  said  Bardo  again,  after 
a  moment's  panse.  And  Komola  seated  herself  on  a  low  stool 
and  let  her  arm  rest  on  her  father's  right  knee,  that  he  might 
lay  his  hand  on  her  hair,  as  he  was  fond  of  doing. 

"  Tito,  I  never  told  yon  that  I  had  once  a  son,"  said  Bardo, 
forgetting  what  had  fallen  from  him  in  the  emotion  raised  by 
their  first  interview.  The  old  man  had  been  deeply  shaken, 
and  was  forced  to  pour  out  his  feelings  in  spite  of  pride. 
''  But  he  left  me  —  he  is  dead  to  me.  I  have  disowned  him 
forever.  He  was  a  ready  scholar  as  you  are,  but  more  fervid 
and  impatient,  and  yet  sometimes  rapt  and  self-absorbed  like 
a  flame  fed  by  some  fitful  source ;  showing  a  disposition  from 
the  very  first  to  turn  away  his  eyes  from  the  clear  lights  of 
reason  and  philosophy,  and  to  prostrate  himself  under  the 
influences  of  a  dim  mysticism  which  eludes  all  rules  of 
human  duty  as  it  eludes  all  argument.  And  so  it  ended.  We 
will  speak  no  more  of  him :  he  is  dead  to  me.  I  wish  his  face 
could  be  blotted  from  that  world  of  memory  in  which  the 
distant  seems  to  grow  clearer  and  the  near  to  fade." 

Bardo  paused,  but  neither  Romola  nor  Tito  dared  to  speak 
—  his  voice  was  too  tremulous,  the  poise  of  his  feelings  too 
doubtful.  But  he  presently  raised  his  hand  and  found  Tito's 
shoulder  to  rest  it  on,  while  he  went  on  speaking,  with  an 
effort  to  be  calmer. 

"  But  you  have  come  to  me,  Tito  —  not  quite  too  late.  I 
will  lose  no  time  in  vain  regret.  When  you  are  working  by 
my  side  I  seem  to  have  found  a  son  again." 

The  old  man,  preoccupied  with  the  governing  interest  of  his 
life,  was  only  thinking  of  the  much-meditated  book  which  had 
quite  thrust  into  the  background  the  suggestion,  raised  by 
Bernardo  del  ISTero's  warning,  of  a  possible  marriage  between 
Tito  and  Romola.  But  Tito  could  not  allow  the  moment  to 
pass  unused. 

"Will  you  let  me  be  always  and  altogether  your  son? 
Will  you  let  me  take  care  of  Romola  —  be  her  husband  ?  I 
think  she  will  not  deny  me.  She  has  said  she  loves  me. 
I  know  I  am  not  equal  to  her  in  birth  —  in  anything;  but  I 
am  no  longer  a  destitute  stranger." 

"  Is  it  true,  my  Romola  ?  "  said  Bardo,  in  a  lower  tone,  an 


THE  PRIZE  IS  NEARLY  GRASPED.  119 

evident  vibration  passing  through  him  and  dissipating  the 
saddened  aspect  of  his  features. 

'"  Yes,  father,"  said  Romola,  firmly.  "  I  love  Tito  —  I  wish 
to  marry  him,  that  we  may  both  be  your  children  and  never  part." 

Tito's  hand  met  hers  in  a  strong  clasp  for  the  first  time, 
while  she  was  speaking,  but  their  eyes  were  fixed  anxiously 
on  her  father. 

"  Why  should  it  not  be  ?  "  said  Bardo,  as  if  arguing  against 
any  opposition  to  his  assent,  rather  than  assenting.  "It 
would  be  a  happiness  to  me  ;  and  thou,  too,  Romola,  wouldst 
be  the  happier  for  it." 

He  stroked  her  long  hair  gently  and  bent  towards  her. 

''Ah,  I  have  been  apt  to  forget  that  thou  needest  some 
other  love  than  mine.  And  thou  wilt  be  a  noble  wife. 
Bernardo  thinks  I  shall  hardly  find  a  husband  fitting  for  thee. 
And  he  is  perhaps  right.  For  thou  art  not  like  the  herd  of 
thy  sex :  thou  art  such  a  woman  as  the  immortal  poets  had  a 
vision  of  when  they  sang  the  lives  of  the  heroes  —  tender 
but  strong,  like  thy  voice,  which  has  been  to  me  instead  of 
the  light  in  the  years  of  my  blindness.  .  .  .  And  so  thou 
lovest  him  ?  " 

He  sat  upright  again  for  a  minute,  and  then  said,  in  the 
same  tone  as  before,  "  Why  should  it  not  be  ?  I  will  think 
of  it ;  I  will  talk  with  Bernardo." 

Tito  felt  a  disagreeable  chill  at  this  answer,  for  Bernardo 
del  Nero's  eyes  had  retained  their  keen  suspicion  whenever 
they  looked  at  him,  and  the  uneasy  remembrance  of  Fra 
Luca  converted  all  uncertainty  into  fear. 

"Speak  for  me,  Romola,"  he  said  pleadingly.  "Messer 
Bernardo  is  sure  to  be  against  me." 

"  N"o,  Tito,"  said  Romola,  "  my  godfather  will  not  oppose 
what  my  father  firmly  wills.  And  it  is  your  will  that  I 
should  marry  Tito  —  is  it  not  true,  father  ?  Nothing  has 
ever  come  to  me  before  that  I  have  wished  for  strongly  :  I 
did  not  think  it  possible  that  I  could  care  so  much  for  any- 
thing that  could  happen  to  myself." 

It  was  a  brief  and  simple  plea ;  but  it  was  the  condensed 
story  of  Romola's  self-repressing  colorless  young  life,  which 
had  thrown  all  its  passion  into  sympathy  with  aged  sorrows, 
aged  ambition,  aged  pride  and  indignation.  It  had  never 
occurred  to  Romola  that  she  should  not  speak  as  directly  and 
emphatically  of  her  love  for  Tito  as  of  any  other  subject. 

"  Romola  mia ! "  said  her  father  fondly,  pausing  on  the 
words,  "  it  is  true  thou  hast  never  urged  on  me  any  wishes 


120  ROMOLA. 

of  thy  own.  And  I  have  no  will  to  resist  thine ;  rather, 
my  heart  met  Tito's  entreaty  at  its  very  first  utterance. 
Nevertheless,  I  must  talk  with  Bernardo  about  the  measures 
needful  to  be  observed.  For  we  must  not  act  in  haste,  or  do 
anything  unbeseeming  my  name.  I  am  poor,  and  held  of 
little  account  by  the  wealthy  of  our  family  —  nay,  I  may  con- 
sider myself  a  lonely  man  —  but  I  must  nevertheless  remem- 
ber that  generous  birth  has  its  obligations.  And  I  would  not 
be  reproached  by  my  fellow-citizens  for  rash  haste  in  bestow- 
ing my  daughter.  Bartolommeo  Scala  gave  his  Alessandra 
to  the  Greek  Marullo,  bvit  Marullo's  lineage  was  well  known, 
and  Scala  himself  is  of  no  extraction.  I  know  Bernardo  will 
hold  that  we  must  take  time  :  he  will,  perhaps,  reproach  me 
with  want  of  due  forethought.  Be  patient,  my  children  :  you 
are  very  young." 

No  more  could  be  said,  and  Eomola's  heart  was  perfectly 
satisfied.  Not  so  Tito's.  If  the  subtle  mixture  of  good  and 
evil  prepares  suffering  for  human  truth  and  purity,  there  is 
also  suffering  prepared  for  the  wrong-doer  by  the  same 
mingled  conditions.  As  Tito  kissed  Romola  on  their  parting 
that  evening,  the  very  strength  of  the  thrill  that  moved  his 
whole  being  at  the  sense  that  this  woman,  whose  beauty  it 
was  hardly  possible  to  think  of  as  anything  but  the  necessary 
consequence  of  her  noble  nature,  loved  him  with  all  the  ten- 
derness that  spoke  in  her  clear  eyes,  brought  a  strong  reaction 
of  regret  that  he  had  not  kept  himself  free  from  that  first 
deceit  which  had  dragged  him  into  the  danger  of  being  dis- 
graced before  her.  There  was  a  spring  of  bitterness  min- 
gling with  that  fountain  of  sweets.  Would  the  death  of  Fra 
Luca  arrest  it  ?    He  hoped  it  would. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE    SHADOW    OF    NEMESIS. 

It  was  the  lazy  afternoon  time  on  the  seventh  of  Septem- 
ber, more  than  two  months  after  the  day  on  which  Romola 
and  Tito  had  confessed  their  love  to  each  other. 

Tito,  just  descended  into  Nello's  shop,  had  found  the  bar- 
ber stretched  on  the  bench  with  liis  cap  over  his  eyes ;  one 
leg  was  drawn  up,  and  the  otlier  had  slipped  tov/ards  the 


THE  SHADOW  OF  NEMESIS.  121 

ground,  having  apparently  carried  with  it  a  manuscript  vol- 
ume of  verse,  which  lay  with  its  leaves  crushed.  In  a  corner 
sat  Sandro,  playing  a  game  at  mora  by  himself,  and  watch- 
ing the  slow  reply  of  his  left  fingers  to  the  arithmetical  de- 
mands of  his  right  with  solemn-eyed  interest. 

Treading  with  the  gentlest  step,  Tito  snatched  up  the  lute, 
and  bending  over  the  barber,  touched  the  strings  lightly 
while  he  sang,  — 

"  Quant'  e  bella  giovinezza, 
Che  si  fugge  tuttavla! 
Chi  vuol  esser  Heto  sia, 
Di  doman  non  c'e  certezza."  ^ 

Nello  was  as  easily  awaked  as  a  bird.  The  cap  was  off  his 
eyes  in  an  instant,  and  he  started  up. 

"  Ah,  my  Apollino !  I  am  somewhat  late  with  my  siesta 
on  this  hot  day,  it  seems.  That  comes  of  not  going  to  sleep  in 
the  natural  way,  but  taking  a  potion  of  potent  poesy.  Hear 
you,  how  I  am  beginning  to  match  my  words  by  the  initial  let- 
ter, like  a  Trovatore  ?  That  is  one  of  my  bad  symptoms  :  I 
am  sorely  afraid  that  the  good  wine  of  m}^  understanding  is 
going  to  run  off  at  the  spigot  of  authorship,  and  I  shall  be 
left  an  empty  cask  with  an  odor  of  dregs,  like  many  another 
incomparable  genius  of  my  acquaintance.  What  is  it,  my 
Orpheus  ?  "  here  Nello  stretched  out  his  arms  to  their  full 
length,  and  then  brought  them  round  till  his  hands  grasped 
Tito's  curls,  and  drew  them  out  playfully.  "  What  is  it  you 
want  of  your  well-tamed  Nello  ?  For  I  perceive  a  coaxing 
sound  in  that  soft  strain  of  yours.  Let  me  see  the  very 
needle's  eye  of  your  desire,  as  the  sublime  poet  says,  that  I 
may  thread  it." 

"  That  is  but  a  tailor's  image  of  your  sublime  poet's,"  said 
Tito,  still  letting  his  fingers  fall  in  a  light  dropping  way  on 
the  strings.  "  But  you  have  divined  the  reason  of  my  affec- 
tionate impatience  to  see  your  eyes  open.  I  want  you  to  give 
me  an  extra  touch  of  your  art  —  not  on  my  chin,  no  ;  but  on 
the  zazzera,  which  is  as  tangled  as  your  Florentine  politics. 
You  have  an  adroit  way  of  inserting  your  comb,  which  flatters 
the  skin,  and  stirs  the  animal  spirits  agreeably  in  that  region ; 
and  a  little  of  your  most  delicate  orange-scent  would  not  be 
amiss,  for  I  am  bound  to  the  Scala  palace,  and  am  to  present 

1  "  Beauteous  is  life  iu  blossom! 
And  it  fleeteth  —  fleeteth  ever ; 
Wlioso  would  be  joyful  —  let  him! 
There's  no  surety  for  the  morrow." 

—  Carnival  Song  by  Lorenzo  de'  Medici^ 


122  ROMOLA. 

myself  in  radiant  company.  The  young  Cardinal  Giovanni 
de'  Medici  is  to  be  there,  and  he  brings  with  him  a  certain 
young  Bernardo  Dovizi  of  Bibbiena,  whose  wit  is  so  rapid 
that  I  see  no  way  of  outrivalling  it  save  by  the  scent  of 
orange-blossoms." 

Nello  had  already  seized  and  flourished  his  comb,  and 
pushed  Tito  gently  backward  into  the  chair,  wrapping  the  cloth 
round  him. 

'*  Never  talk  of  rivalry,  bel  giovane  mio  :  Bernardo  Dovizi 
is  a  keen  youngster,  who  will  never  carry  a  net  out  to  catch 
the  wind ;  but  he  has  something  of  the  same  sharp-muzzled 
look  as  his  brother  Ser  Piero,  the  weasel  that  Piero  de'  Medici 
keeps  at  his  beck  to  slip  through  small  holes  for  him.  No  ! 
you  distance  all  rivals,  and  may  soon  touch  the  sky  with  your 
forefinger.  They  tell  me  you  have  even  carried  enough  honey 
with  you  to  sweeten  the  sour  Messer  Angelo ;  for  he  has  pro- 
nounced you  less  of  an  ass  than  might  have  been  expected, 
considering  there  is  such  a  good  understanding  between  you 
and  the  Secretary." 

"  And  between  ourselves,  Nello  mio,  that  Messer  Angelo  has 
more  genius  and  erudition  than  I  can  find  in  all  the  other 
Florentine  scholars  put  together.  It  may  answer  very  well 
for  them  to  cry  me  up  now,  when  Poliziano  is  beaten  down 
with  grief,  or  illness,  or  something  else ;  I  can  try  a  flight 
with  such  a  sparrow-hawk  as  Pietro  Crinito,  but  for  Poliziano, 
he  is  a  large-beaked  eagle  who  Avould  swallow  me,  feathers 
and  all,  and  not  feel  any  difference." 

''  I  will  not  contradict  your  modesty  there,  if  you  will  have 
it  so ;  but  you  don't  expect  us  clever  Florentines  to  keep 
saying  the  same  things  over  again  every  day  of  our  lives,  as 
we  must  do  if  we  always  told  the  truth.  We  cry  down  Dante, 
and  we  cry  up  Francesco  Cei,  just  for  the  sake  of  variety ; 
and  if  we  cry  you  up  as  a  new  Poliziano,  Heaven  has  taken 
care  that  it  shall  not  be  quite  so  great  a  lie  as  it  might  have 
been.  And  are  you  not  a  pattern  of  virtue  in  this  wicked 
city  ?  with  your  ears  double-waxed  against  all  siren  invita- 
tions that  would  lure  you  from  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  and  the 
great  work  which  is  to  astonish  posterity  ?  " 

"  Posterity  in  good  truth,  whom  it  will  probably  astonish  as 
the  universe  does,  by  the  impossibility  of  seeing  what  was 
the  plan  of  it." 

"Yes,  something  like  that  was  being  prophesied  here  the 
other  day.  Cristoforo  Landino  said  that  the  excellent  Bardo 
was  one  of  those  scholars  who  lie  overthrown  in  their  learning, 


THE  SHADOW  OF  NEMESIS.  123 

like  cavaliers  in  heavy  armor,  and  then  get  angry  because  they 
are  over-ridden  —  which  pithy  remark,  it  seems  to  me,  was 
not  a  herb  out  of  his  own  garden  ;  for  of  all  men,  for  feeding 
one  with  an  empty  spoon  and  gagging  one  with  vain  expecta- 
tion by  long  discourse,  Messer  Cristoforo  is  the  pearl.  Ecco  ! 
you  are  perfect  now."  Here  Nello  drew  away  the  cloth. 
"  Impossible  to  add  a  grace  more  !  But  love  is  not  always  to 
be  fed  on  learning,  eh  ?  I  shall  have  to  dress  the  zazzera  for 
the  betrothal  before  long  —  is  it  not  true  ?  " 

"  Perhaps,"  said  Tito,  smiling,  "  unless  Messer  Bernardo 
should  next  recommend  Bardo  to  require  that  I  should  yoke  a 
lion  and  a  wild  boar  to  the  car  of  the  Zecca  before  I  can  win 
my  Alcestis.  But  I  confess  he  is  right  in  holding  me  unwor- 
thy of  Eomola ;  she  is  a  Pleiad  that  may  grow  dim  by  marry- 
ing any  mortal." 

''  Gnaffe,  your  modesty  is  in  the  right  place  there.  Yet  fate 
seems  to  have  measured  and  chiselled  you  for  the  niche  that 
was  left  empty  by  the  old  man's  son,  who,  by  the  way,  Cronaca 
was  telling  me,  is  now  at  San  Marco.     Did  you  know  ?  " 

A  slight  electric  shock  passed  through  Tito  as  he  rose  from 
the  chair,  but  it  was  not  outwardly  perceptible,  for  he  imme- 
diately stooped  to  pick  up  the  fallen  book,  and  busied  his 
fingers  with  flattening  the  leaves,  while  he  said,  — 

"No;  he  was  at  Fiesole,  I  thought.  Are  you  sure  he  is 
come  back  to  San  jMarco  ?  " 

"  Cronaca  is  my  authority,"  said  ISTello,  with  a  shrug.  "  I 
don't  frequent  that  sanctuary,  but  he  does.  Ah,"  he  added, 
taking  the  book  from  Tito's  hands,  "  my  poor  Kencia  da  Bar- 
berino !  It  jars  your  scholarly  feelings  to  see  the  pages  dog's- 
eared.  I  was  lulled  to  sleep  by  the  well-rhymed  charms  of 
that  rustic  maiden  —  *  prettier  than  the  turnip-flower,'  '  with  a 
cheek  more  savory  than  cheese.'  But  to  get  such  a  well-scented 
notion  of  the  contadina,  one  must  lie  on  velvet  cushions  in  the 
Via  Larga — not  go  to  look  at  the  Fierucoloni  stumping  in  to 
the  Piazza  della  Nunziata  this  evening  after  sundown." 

"  And  pray  who  are  the  Fierucoloni  ?  "  said  Tito,  indiffer- 
ently, settling  his  cap. 

"  The  contadine  who  came  from  the  mountains  of  Pistoia, 
and  the  Casentino,  and  Heaven  knows  where,  to  keep  their 
vigil  in  the  church  of  the  Nunziata,  and  sell  their  yarn  and 
dried  mushrooms  at  the  Fierucola,^  as  we  call  it.  They  make 
a  queer  show,  with  their  paper  lanterns,  howling  their  hymns 
to  the  Virgin  on  this  eve  of  her  nativity  —  if  you  had  the 

»  The  Little  Fair. 


124  ROMOLA. 

leisure  to  see  them.  No  ?  —  well,  I  have  had  enough  of  It 
myself,  for  there  is  wild  work  in  the  Piazza.  One  may  happen 
to  get  a  stone  or  two  about  one's  ears  or  shins  without  asking 
for  it,  and  I  was  never  fond  of  that  pressing  attention. 
Addio." 

Tito  carried  a  little  uneasiness  with  him  on  his  visit,  whicl 
ended  earlier  than  he  had  expected,  the  boy -cardinal  Giovanni' 
de'  Medici,  youngest  of  red-hatted  fathers,  who  has  since  pre- 
sented his  broad  dark  cheek  very  conspicuously  to  posterity  as 
Pope  Leo  the  Tenth,  having  been  detained  at  his  favorite 
pastime  of  the  chase,  and  having  failed  to  appear.  It  still 
wanted  half  an  hour  of  sunset  as  he  left  the  door  of  the 
Scala  palace,  with  the  intention  of  proceeding  forthwith  to 
the  Via  de'  Bardi ;  but  he  had  not  gone  far  when,  to  his  aston- 
ishment, he  saw  Romola  advancing  towards  him  along  the 
Borgo  Pinti. 

She  wore  a  thick  black  veil  and  black  mantle,  but  it  was 
impossible  to  mistake  her  figure  and  her  walk ;  and  by  her 
side  was  a  short  stout  form,  which  he  recognized  as  that  of 
Monna  Brigida,  in  spite  of  the  unusual  plainness  of  her  attire. 
Romola  had  not  been  bred  up  to  devotional  observance,  and 
the  occasions  on  which  she  took  the  air  elsewhere  than  under 
the  loggia  on  the  roof  of  the  house,  were  so  rare  and  so  much 
dwelt  on  beforehand,  because  of  Bardo's  dislike  to  be  left 
without  her,  that  Tito  felt  sure  there  must  have  been  some 
sudden  and  urgent  ground  for  an  absence  of  which  he  had 
heard  nothing  the  day  before.  She  saw  him  through  her  veil 
and  hastened  her  steps. 

"  Romola,  has  anything  happened  ?  "  said  Tito,  turning  to 
walk  by  her  side. 

She  did  not  answer  at  the  first  moment,  and  Monna  Brigida 
broke  in : 

"  Ah,  Messer  Tito,  you  do  well  to  turn  round,  for  we  are  in 
haste.  And  is  it  not  a  misfortune  ?  —  we  are  obliged  to  go 
round  by  the  walls  and  turn  up  the  Via  del  Maglio,  because  of 
the  Fair  ;  for  the  contadine  coming  in  block  up  the  way  by  the 
Nunziata,  which  would  have  taken  us  to  San  Marco  in  half 
the  time." 

Tito's  heart  gave  a  great  bound,  and  began  to  beat  vio- 
lently. 

''Romola,"  he  said,  in  a  low  tone,  "arc  you  going  to  San 
Marco  ?  " 

They  were  now  out  of  the  Borgo  Pinti  and  were  under  the 
city  walls,  where  they  had  wide  gardens  on  their  left  hand, 


THE  SHADOW  OF  NEMESIS.  125 

and  all  was  quiet.  Eomola  put  aside  her  veil  for  the  sake  of 
breathing  the  air,  and  he  could  see  the  subdued  agitation  in 
her  face. 

"  Yes,  Tito  mio,"  she  said,  looking  directly  at  him  with  sad 
eyes.  "For  the  first  time  I  am  doing  something  unknown  to 
my  father.  It  comforts  me  that  I  have  met  you,  for  at  least 
I  can  tell  you.  But  if  you  are  going  to  him,  it  will  be  well 
for  you  not  to  say  that  you  met  me.  He  thinks  I  am  only 
gone  to  my  cousin,  because  she  sent  for  me.  I  left  my  god- 
father with  him  :  he  knows  where  I  am  going,  and  why.  You 
remember  that  evening  when  my  brother's  name  was  men- 
tioned and  my  father  spoke  of  him  to  you  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Tito,  in  a  low  tone.  There  was  a  strange  com- 
plication in  his  mental  state.  His  heart  sank  at  the  probabil- 
ity that  a  great  change  was  coming  over  his  prospects,  while 
at  the  same  time  his  thoughts  were  darting  over  a  hundred 
details  of  the  course  he  would  take  when  the  change  had 
come  ;  and  yet  he  returned  Romola's  gaze  with  a  hungry  sense 
that  it  might  be  the  last  time  she  would  ever  bend  it  on  him 
with  full  unquestioning  confidence. 

"The  cugina  had  heard  that  he  was  come  back,  and  the 
evening  before — the  evening  of  San  Giovanni  —  as  I  after- 
wards found,  he  had  been  seen  by  our  good  Maso  near  the 
door  of  our  house  ;  but  when  Maso  went  to  inquire  at  San 
Marco,  Dino,  that  is,  my  brother  —  he  was  christened  Ber- 
nardino, after  our  godfather,  but  now  he  calls  himself  Fra 
Luca  —  had  been  taken  to  the  monastery  at  Fiesole,  because  he 
was  ill.  But  this  morning  a  message  came  to  Maso,  saying 
that  he  was  come  back  to  San  Marco,  and  Maso  went  to  him 
there.  He  is  very  ill,  and  he  has  adjured  me  to  go  and  see 
him.  I  cannot  refuse  it,  though  I  hold  him  guilty ;  I  still 
remember  how  I  loved  him  when  I  was  a  little  girl,  before  I 
knew  that  he  would  forsake  my  father.  And  perhaps  he  has 
some  word  of  penitence  to  send  b}^  me.  It  cost  me  a  struggle 
to  act  in  opposition  to  my  father's  feeling,  which  I  have 
always  held  to  be  just.  I  am  almost  sure  you  will  think  I 
have  chosen  rightly,  Tito,  because  I  have  noticed  that  your 
nature  is  less  rigid  than  mine,  and  nothing  makes  you  angry  : 
it  would  cost  you  less  to  be  forgiving ;  though,  if  you  had 
seen  your  father  forsaken  by  one  to  whom  he  had  given  his 
chief  love  —  by  one  in  whom  he  had  planted  his  labor  and  his 
hopes  —  forsaken  when  his  need  was  becoming  greatest  —  even 
you,  Tito,  would  find  it  hard  to  forgive." 

What  could  he  say  ?     He  was  not  equal  to  the  hypocrisy 


126  ROM  OLA. 

of  telling  Romola  that  such  offences  ought  not  to  be  par- 
doned ;  and  he  had  not  the  courage  to  utter  any  words  of 
dissuasion. 

''You  are  right,  my  Romola ;  you  are  always  right,  except 
in  thinking  too  well  of  me."' 

There  was  really  some  genuineness  in  those  last  words,  and 
Tito  looked  very  beautiful  as  he  uttered  them,  with  an  unusual 
pallor  in  his  face,  and  a  slight  quivering  of  his  lip.  Romola, 
interpreting  all  things  largely,  like  a  mind  prepossessed  with 
high  beliefs,  had  a  tearful  brightness  in  her  eyes  as  she 
looked  at  him,  touched  with  keen  joy  that  he  felt  so  strongly 
whatever  she  felt.  But  without  pausing  in  her  walk,  she 
said, — 

"  And  now,  Tito,  I  wish  you  to  leave  me,  for  the  cugina  and 
I  shall  be  less  noticed  if  we  enter  the  piazza  alone." 

"Yes,  it  were  better  you  should  leave  us,"  said  Monna 
Brigida;  "for  to  say  the  truth,  Messer  Tito,  all  eyes  follow 
you,  and  let  Romola  muffle  herself  as  she  will,  every  one 
wants  to  see  what  there  is  under  her  veil,  for  she  has  that 
way  of  walking  like  a  procession.  Not  that  I  find  fault  with 
her  for  it,  only  it  doesn't  suit  my  steps.  And,  indeed,  I 
would  rather  not  have  us  seen  going  to  San  Marco,  and  that's 
why  I  am  dressed  as  if  I  were  one  of  the  Piagnoni  them- 
selves, and  as  old  as  Sant'  Anna ;  for  if  it  had  been  anybody 
but  poor  Dino,  who  ought  to  be  forgiven  if  he's  dying,  for 
what's  the  use  of  having  a  grudge  against  dead  people  ?  — r 
make  them  feel  while  they  live,  say  I "  — 

No  one  made  a  scruple  of  interrupting  Monna  Brigida,  and 
Tito,  having  just  raised  Romola's  hand  to  his  lips,  and  said, 
"I  understand,  I  obey  you,"  now  turned  away,  lifting  his 
cap  —  a  sign  of  reverence  rarely  made  at  that  time  by  native 
Florentines,  and  which  excited  Bernardo  del  Nero's  contempt 
for  Tito  as  a  fawning  Greek,  while  to  Romola,  who  loved 
homage,  it  gave  him  an  exceptional  grace. 

He  was  half  glad  of  the  dismissal,  half  disposed  to  cling 
to  Romola  to  the  last  moment  in  which  she  would  love  him 
without  suspicion.  For  it  seemed  to  him  certain  that  this 
brother  would  before  all  things  want  to  know,  and  that 
Romola  would  before  all  things  confide  to  him,  what  was  her 
father's  position  and  her  own  after  the  years  which  must 
have  brought  so  much  change.  She  would  tell  him  that  she 
was  soon  to  be  publicly  betrothed  to  a  young  scholar,  who 
was  to  till  up  the  place  left  vacant  long  ago  by  a  wandering 
son.     He  foresaw  the  impulse  that  would  prompt  Romola  to 


THE  PEASANTS'   FAIR.  127 

dwell  on  that  prospect,  and  what  would  follow  on  the  men- 
tion of  the  future  husband's  name.  Fra  Luca  would  tell  all 
he  knew  and  conjectured,  and  Tito  saw  no  possible  falsity  by 
which  he  could  now  ward  off  the  worst  consequences  of  his 
former  dissimulation.  It  was  all  over  with  his  prospects  in 
Florence.  There  was  Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero,  who  would 
be  delighted  at  seeiug  confirmed  the  wisdom  of  his  advice 
about  deferring  the  Detrothal  until  Tito's  character  and  posi- 
tion had  been  established  by  a  longer  residence  ;  and  the  his- 
tory of  the  young  Greek  professor,  whose  benefactor  was  in 
slavery,  would  be  the  talk  under  every  loggia.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  felt  too  fevered  and  agitated  to  trust  his 
power  of  self-command  ;  he  gave  up  his  intended  visit  to 
Bardo,  and  walked  up  and  down  under  the  walls  until  the 
yellow  light  in  the  west  had  quite  faded,  when,  without  any 
distinct  purpose,  he  took  the  first  turning,  which  happened  to 
be  the  Via  San  Sebastiano,  leading  him  directly  towards  the 
Piazza  dell'  Annunziata. 

He  was  at  one  of  those  lawless  moments  which  come  to  us 
all  if  we  have  no  guide  but  desire,  and  if  the  pathway  where 
desire  leads  us  seems  suddenly  closed ;  he  was  ready  to  follow 
any  beckoning  that  offered  him  an  immediate  purpose. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE    peasants'    FAIR. 

The  moving  crowd  and  the  strange  mixture  of  noises  that 
burst  on  him  at  the  entrance  of  the  piazza,  reminded  Tito  of 
what  Nello  had  said  to  him  about  the  Fierucoloni,  and  he 
pushed  his  way  into  the  crowd  with  a  sort  of  pleasure  in  the 
hooting  and  elbowing,  which  filled  the  empty  moments,  and 
dulled  that  calculation  of  the  future  which  had  so  new  a 
dreariness  for  him,  as  he  foresaw  himself  wandering  away 
solitary  in  pursuit  of  some  unknown  fortune,  that  his  thought 
had  even  glanced  towards  going  in  search  of  Baldassarre 
after  all. 

At  each  of  the  opposite  inlets  he  saw  people  struggling 
into  the  piazza,  while  above  them  paper  lanterns,  held  aloft 
on  sticks,  were  waving  uncertainly  to  and  fro.  A  rude  mo- 
notonous chant  made  a  distinctly  traceable  strand  of  noise, 


128  ROMOLA. 

across  which  screams,  whistles,  gibing  chants  in  piping  boy. 
ish  voices,  the  beating  of  drums,  and  the  ringing  of  little 
bells,  met  each  other  in  confused  din.  Every  now  and  then 
one  of  the  dim  floating  lights  disappeared  with  a  smash  from 
a  stone  launched  more  or  less  vaguely  in  pursuit  of  mischief, 
followed  by  a  scream  and  renewed  shouts.  But  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  whirling  tumult  there  were  groups  who  were 
keeping  this  vigil  of  the  Nativity  of  the  Virgin  in  a  more 
methodical  manner  than  by  fitful  stone-throwing  and  gibing. 
Certain  ragged  men,  darting  a  hard  sharp  glance  around  them 
while  their  tongues  rattled  merrily,  were  inviting  country 
people  to  game  with  them  on  fair  and  open-handed  terms; 
two  masquerading  figures  on  stilts,  who  had  snatched  lanterns 
from  the  crowd,  were  swaying  the  lights  to  and  fro  in  mete- 
oric fashion,  as  they  strode  hither  and  thither ;  a  sage 
trader  was  doing  a  profitable  business  at  a  small  covered 
stall,  in  hot  berlingozzi,  a  favorite  farinaceous  delicacy ;  one 
man  standing  on  a  barrel.  Math  his  back  firmly  planted 
against  a  pillar  of  the  loggia  in  front  of  the  Foundling  Hos- 
pital (Spedale  degl'  Innocenti),  was  selling  efficacious  pills, 
invented  by  a  doctor  of  Salerno,  warranted  to  prevent  tooth- 
ache and  death  by  drowning  ;  and  not  far  off,  against  another 
pillar  a  tumbler  was  showing  off  his  tricks  on  a  small  platform  ; 
while  a  handful  of  'prentices,  despising  the  slack  entertainment 
of  guerilla  stone-throwing,  were  having  a  private  concentrated 
match  of  that  favorite  Florentine  sport  at  the  narrow  en- 
trance of  the  Via  de'  Febbrai. 

Tito,  obliged  to  make  his  way  through  chance  openings  in 
the  crowd,  found  himself  at  one  moment  close  to  the  trotting 
procession  of  barefooted,  hard-heeled  contadine,  and  could 
see  their  sun-dried,  bronzed  faces,  and  their  strange,  fragment- 
ary garb,  dim  with  hereditary  dirt,  and  of  obsolete  stuffs 
and  fashions,  that  made  them  look,  in  the  eyes  of  the  city 
people,  like  a  way-worn  ancestry  returning  from  a  pilgrimage 
on  which  they  had  set  out  a  centuiy  ago.  Just  then  it  was 
the  hardy,  scant-feeding  peasant-women  from  the  mountains 
of  Pistoia,  who  were  entering  with  a  year's  labor  in  a  moder- 
ate bundle  of  yarn  on  their  backs,  and  in  their  hearts  that 
meagre  hope  of  good  and  that  wide  dim  fear  of  harm,  which 
were  somehow  to  be  cared  for  by  the  Blessed  Virgin,  whose 
miraculous  image,  painted  by  the  angels,  was  to  have  the 
curtain  drawn  away  from  it  on  this  Eve  of  her  Nativity,  that 
its  potency  miglit  stream  forth  without  obstruction. 

At  another  moment  he  was  forced  away  towards  the  bound- 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  129 

ary  of  the  piazza,  where  the  more  stationary  candidates  for 
attention  and  small  coin  had  judiciously  placed  themselves,  in 
order  to  be  safe  in  their  rear.  Among  these  Tito  recognized 
his  acquaintance  Bratti,  who  stood  with  his  back  against  a 
pillar,  and  his  mouth  pursed  up  in  disdainful  silence,  eying 
every  one  who  approached  him  with  a  cold  glance  of  superior- 
ity, and  keeping  his  hand  fast  on  a  serge  covering  which  con- 
cealed the  contents  of  the  basket  slung  before  him.  Rather 
surprised  at  a  deportment  so  unusual  in  an  anxious  trader, 
Tito  went  nearer  and  saw  two  women  go  up  to  Bratti's  basket 
with  a  look  of  curiosity,  whereupon  the  pedler  drew  the  cov- 
ering tighter,  and  looked  another  way.  It  was  quite  too  pro- 
voking, and  one  of  the  women  was  fain  to  ask  what  there  was 
in  his  basket  ? 

"  Before  I  answer  that,  Monna,  I  must  know  whether  you 
mean  to  buy.  I  can't  show  such  wares  as  mine  in  this  fair  for 
every  fly  to  settle  on  and  pay  nothing.  My  goods  are  a  little 
too  choice  for  that.  Besides,  I've  only  two  left,  and  I've  no 
mind  to  sell  them  ;  for  with  the  chances  of  the  pestilence  that 
wise  men  talk  of,  there  is  likelihood  of  their  being  worth  their 
weight  in  gold.     No,  no  :  aridate  con  DioT 

The  two  women  looked  at  each  other. 

"  And  what  may  be  the  price  ?  "  said  the  second. 

"  Not  wdthin  what  you  are  likely  to  have  in  your  purse, 
buona  donna,"  said  Bratti,  in  a  compassionately  supercilious 
tone.  "  I  recommend  you  to  trust  in  Messer  Domeneddio  and 
the  saints  :  poor  people  can  do  no  better  for  themselves." 

"Not  so  poor  !  "  said  the  second  woman,  indignantly,  draw- 
ing out  her  money-bag.  "  Come,  now  !  what  do  you  say  to  a 
grosso  ?  " 

"  I  say  you  may  get  twenty-one  quattrini  for  it,"  said  Bratti, 
coolly  ;  ''  but  not  of  me,  for  I  haven't  got  that  small  change." 

"  Come  ;  two,  then  ?  "  said  the  woman,  getting  exasperated, 
while  her  companion  looked  at  her  with  some  envy.  "  It  will 
hardly  be  above  two,  I  think." 

After  further  bidding,  and  further  mercantile  coquetry, 
Bratti  put  on  an  air  of  concession. 

"  Since  you've  set  your  mind  on  it,"  he  said,  slowly  raising 
the  cover,  "  I  should  be  loath  to  do  you  a  mischief  ;  for  Maestro 
Gabbadeo  used  to  say,  when  a  woman  sets  her  mind  on  a  thing 
and  doesn't  get  it,  she's  in  worse  danger  of  the  pestilence  than 
before.  Ecco  !  I  have  but  two  left ;  and  let  me  tell  you,  the 
fellow  to  them  is  on  the  finger  of  Maestro  Gabbadeo,  who  is 
gone  to  Bologna  —  as  wise  a  doctor  as  sits  at  any  door." 


130  ROMOLA. 

The  precious  objects  were  two  clumsy  iron  rings,  beaten 
into  the  fashion  of  old  Roman  rings,  such  as  were  sometimes 
disinterred.  The  rust  on  them,  and  the  entirely  hidden  char- 
acter of  their  potency,  were  so  satisfactory,  that  the  grossi 
were  paid  without  grumbling,  and  the  first  woman,  destitute 
of  those  handsome  coins,  succeeded  after  much  show  of  reluc- 
tance on  Bratti's  part  in  driving  a  bargain  with  some  of  her 
yarn,  and  carried  off  the  remaining  ring  in  triumph.  Bratti 
covered  up  his  basket,  which  was  now  filled  with  miscellanies, 
probably  obtained  under  the  same  sort  of  circumstances  as  the 
yarn,  and,  moving  from  his  pillar,  came  suddenly  upon  Tito, 
who,  if  he  had  had  time,  would  have  chosen  to  avoid  recog- 
nition. 

"  By  the  head  of  San  Giovanni,  now,"  said  Bratti,  drawing 
Tito  back  to  the  pillar,  "  this  is  a  piece  of  luck.  For  I  was 
talking  of  you  this  morning,  Messer  Greco ;  but,  I  said,  he  is 
mounted  up  among  the  signori  now  —  and  I'm  glad  of  it,  for 
I  was  at  the  bottom  of  his  fortune  —  but  I  can  rarely  get  speech 
of  him,  for  he's  not  to  be  caught  lying  on  the  stones  now  —  not 
he !  But  it's  your  luck,  not  mine,  Messer  Greco,  save  and 
except  some  small  trifle  to  satisfy  me  for  my  trouble  in  the 
transaction." 

*'  You  speak  in  riddles,  Bratti,"  said  Tito.  "  Remember,  I 
don't  sharpen  my  wits,  as  you  do,  by  driving  hard  bargains  for 
iron  rings  :  you  must  be  plain." 

"  By  the  Holy  'Vangels  !  it  was  an  easy  bargain  I  gave  them. 
If  a  Hebrew  gets  thirty-two  per  cent.,  I  hope  a  Christian  may 
get  a  little  more.  If  I  had  not  borne  a  conscience,  I  should 
have  got  twice  the  money  and  twice  the  yarn.  But,  talking  of 
rings,  it  is  your  ring  —  that  very  ring  you've  got  on  your  finger 
. —  that  I  could  get  you  a  purchaser  for;  ay,  and  a  purchaser 
with  a  deep  money-bag." 

"  Truly  ?  "  said  Tito,  looking  at  his  ring  and  listening. 

"  A  Genoese  who  is  going  straight  away  into  Hungary,  as 
I  understand.  He  came  and  looked  all  over  my  shop  to  see  if 
I  had  any  old  things  I  didn't  know  the  price  of ;  I  warrant  you, 
he  thought  I  had  a  pumpkin  on  my  shoulders.  He  had  been 
rummaging  all  the  shops  in  Florence.  And  he  had  a  ring  on 
—  not  like  yours,  but  something  of  the  same  fashion ;  and  as 
he  was  talking  of  rings,  I  said  I  knew  a  fine  young  man,  a  par- 
ticular acquaintance  of  mine,  who  had  a  ring  of  that  sort.  And 
he  said,  'Who  is  he,  pray  ?  Tell  him  I'll  give  him  his  price 
for  it.'  And  I  thought  of  going  after  you  to  Kello's  to-morrow ; 
for  it's  my  opinion  of  you,  Messer  Greco,  that  you're  not  one 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  131 

who'd  see  the  Arno  run  broth,  and  stand  by  without  dipping 
your  finger." 

Tito  had  lost  no  word  of  what  Bratti  had  said,  yet  his  mind 
had  been  very  busy  all  the  while.  Why  should  he  keep  the 
ring  ?  It  had  been  a  mere  sentiment,  a  mere  fancy,  that  had 
prevented  him  from  selling  it  with  the  other  gems  ;  if  he  had 
been  wiser  and  had  sold  it,  he  might  perhaps  have  escaped  that 
identification  by  Fra  Luca.  It  was  true  that  it  had  been  taken 
from  Baldassarre's  finger  and  put  on  his  own  as  soon  as  his 
young  hand  had  grown  to  the  needful  size :  but  there  was 
really  no  valid  good  to  anybody  in  those  superstitious  scruples 
about  inanimate  objects.  The  ring  had  helped  towards  the 
recognition  of  him.  Tito  had  begun  to  dislike  recognition, 
which  was  a  claim  from  the  past.  This  foreigner's  offer,  if  he 
would  really  give  a  good  price,  was  an  opportunity  for  getting 
rid  of  the  ring  without  the  trouble  of  seeking  a  purchaser. 

"  You  speak  with  your  usual  wisdom,  Bratti,"  said  Tito. 
"  I  have  no  objection  to  hear  what  your  Genoese  will  offer. 
But  when  and  where  shall  I  have  speech  of  him  ?  " 

"  To-morrow,  at  three  hours  after  sunrise,  he  will  be  at  my 
shop,  and  if  your  wits  are  of  that  sharpness  I  have  always 
taken  them  to  be,  Messer  Greco,  you  will  ask  him  a  heavy 
price  ;  for  he  minds  not  money.  It's  my  belief  he's  buying 
for  somebody  else,  and  not  for  himself  —  perhaps  for  some 
great  signor." 

"  It  is  well,"  said  Tito.  "  I  will  be  at  your  shop,  if  nothing 
hinders." 

"  And  you  will  doubtless  deal  nobly  by  me  for  old  acquaint- 
ance' sake,  Messer  Greco,  so  I  will  not  stay  to  fix  the  small 
sum  you  will  give  me  in  token  of  my  service  in  the  matter. 
It  seems  to  me  a  thousand  years  now  till  I  get  out  of  the  piazza, 
for  a  fair  is  a  dull,  not  to  say  a  wicked  thing,  when  one  has  no 
more  goods  to  sell." 

Tito  made  a  hasty  sign  of  assent  and  adieu,  and  moving 
away  from  the  pillar,  again  found  himself  pushed  towards  the 
middle  of  the  piazza  and  back  again,  without  the  power  of 
determining  his  own  course.  In  this  zigzag  way  he  was  car- 
ried along  to  the  end  of  the  piazza  opposite  the  church,  where, 
in  a  deep  recess  formed  by  an  irregularity  in  the  line  of  houses, 
an  entertainment  was  going  forwai-d  which  seemed  to  be  es- 
pecially attractive  to  the  crowd.  Loud  bursts  of  laughter 
interrupted  a  monologue  which  was  sometimes  slow  and  ora- 
torical, at  others  rattling  and  bulToonish.  Here  a  girl  was  being 
pushed  forward  into  the  inner  circle  with  apparent  reluctance, 


132  ROMOLA. 

and  there  a  loud  laughing  minx  was  finding  a  way  with  her 
own  elbows.  It  was  a  strange  light  that  was  spread  over  the 
piazza.  There  were  the  pale  stars  breaking  out  above,  and 
the  dim  waving  lanterns  below,  leaving  all  objects  indistinct 
except  when  they  were  seen  close  under  the  fitfully  moving 
lights ;  but  in  this  recess  there  was  a  stronger  light,  against 
which  the  heads  of  the  encircling  spectators  stood  in  dark 
relief  as  Tito  was  gradually  pushed  towards  them,  while  above 
them  rose  the  head  of  a  man  wearing  a  white  mitre  with  yel- 
low cabalistic  figures  upon  it. 

"  Behold,  my  children ! "  Tito  heard  him  saying,  ''  behold 
your  opportunity  !  neglect  not  the  holy  sacrament  of  matri- 
mony when  it  can  be  had  for  the  small  sum  of  a  white  quat- 
trino — the  cheapest  matrimony  ever  offered,  and  dissolved 
by  a  special  bull  beforehand  at  every  man's  own  will  and 
pleasure.  Behold  the  Bull !  "  Here  the  speaker  held  up  a 
piece  of  parchment  with  huge  seals  attached  to  it.  "  Behold 
the  indulgence  granted  by  his  Holiness  Alexander  the  Sixth, 
who,  being  newly  elected  Pope  for  his  peculiar  piety,  intends 
»".o  reform  and  purify  the  Church,  and  wisely  begins  by  abolish- 
ing that  priestly  abuse  which  keeps  too  large  a  share  of  this 
privileged  matrimony  to  the  clergy  and  stints  the  laity.  Spit 
once,  my  sons,  and  pay  a  white  quattrino  !  This  is  the  whole 
and  sole  price  of  the  indulgence.  The  quattrino  is  the  only 
difference  the  Holy  Father  allows  to  be  put  any  longer  between 
us  and  the  clergy  —  who  spit  and  pay  nothing." 

Tito  thought  he  knew  the  voice,  which  had  a  peculiarly 
sharp  ring,  but  the  face  was  too  much  in  shadow  from  the 
lights  behind  for  him  to  be  sure  of  the  features.  Stepping  as 
near  as  he  could,  he  saw  within  the  circle  behind  the  speaker 
an  altar-like  table  raised  on  a  small  platform,  and  covered  with 
a  red  drapery  stitched  all  over  with  yellow  cabalistical  figures. 
Half  a  dozen  thin  tapers  burned  at  the  back  of  this  table,  which 
had  a  conjuring  apparatus  scattered  over  it,  a  large  open  book 
in  the  centre,  and  at  one  of  the  front  angles  a  monkey  fastened 
by  a  cord  to  a  small  ring  and  holding  a  small  taper,  which  in 
his  incessant  fidgety  movements  fell  more  or  less  aslant,  whilst 
an  impish  boy  in  a  white  surplice  occupied  himself  chiefly  in 
cuffing  the  monkey,  and  adjusting  the  taper.  The  man  in  the 
mitre  also  wore  a  surplice,  and  over  it  a  chasuble  on  which  the 
signs  of  the  zodiac  were  rudely  marked  in  black  upon  a  yellow 
ground.  Tito  was  sure  now  that  he  recognized  the  sharp  up- 
ward-tending angles  of  the  face  under  the  mitre :  it  was  that 
of  Maestro  Vaiano,  the  mountebank,  from  whom  he  had  rescued 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  133 

Tessa,  Pretty  little  Tessa !  Perhaps  she  too  had  come  in 
among  the  troops  of  contadine. 

"  Come,  my  maidens  !  This  is  the  time  for  the  pretty 
who  can  have  many  chances,  and  for  the  ill-favored  who  have 
few.  Matrimony  to  be  had  —  hot,  eaten,  and  done  with  as 
easily  as  berlingozzl !  And  see!"  here  the  conjuror  held  up 
a  cluster  of  tiny  bags.  "•  To  every  bride  I  give  a  Breve  with 
a  secret  in  it  —  the  secret  alone  worth  the  money  you  pay  for 
the  matrimony.  The  secret  how  to  —  no,  no,  I  will  not  tell 
you  what  the  secret  is  about,  and  that  makes  it  a  double 
secret.  Hang  it  round  your  neck  if  you  like,  and  never  look 
at  it ;  I  don't  say  that  will  not  be  the  best,  for  then  you  will 
see  many  things  you  don't  expect :  though  if  you  open  it  you 
may  break  your  leg,  e  vero,  but  you  will  know  a  secret !  Some- 
thing nobody  knows  but  me  !  And  mark  —  I  give  you  the 
Breve,  I  don't  sell  it,  as  many  another  holy  man  would :  the 
quattrino  is  for  the  matrimony,  and  the  Breve  you  get  for 
nothing.  Orsu,  giovanetti,  come  like  dutiful  sons  of  the 
Church  and  buy  the  Indulgencs  of  his  Holiness  Alexander  the 
Sixth." 

This  buffoonery  just  fitted  the  taste  of  the  audience;  the 
fierucola  was  but  a  small  occasion,  so  the  townsmen  might  be 
contented  with  jokes  that  were  rather  less  indecent  than  those 
they  were  accustomed  to  hear  at  every  carnival,  put  into  easy 
rhyme  by  the  Magnifico  and  his  poetic  satellites ;  while  the 
women,  over  and  above  any  relish  of  the  fun,  really  began  to 
have  an  itch  for  the  Brevl.  Several  couples  had  already  gone 
through  the  ceremony,  in  which  the  conjuror's  solemn 
gibberish  and  grimaces  over  the  open  book,  the  antics  of  the 
monkey,  and  even  the  preliminary  spitting,  had  called  forth 
peals  of  laughter ;  and  now  a  well-looking,  merry-eyed  youth 
of  seventeen,  in  a  loose  tunic  and  red  cap,  pushed  forward, 
holding  by  the  hand  a  plump  brunette,  whose  scanty  ragged 
dress  displayed  her  round  arms  and  legs  very  picturesquely. 

'•'  Fetter  us  without  delay.  Maestro  ! "  said  the  youth,  "  for 
I  have  got  to  take  my  bride  home  and  paint  her  under  the 
light  of  a  lantern." 

''  Ha !  Mariotto,  my  son,  I  commend  your  pious  observ- 
ance. .  .  ."  The  conjuror  was  going  on,  when  a  loud  chatter- 
ing behind  warned  him  that  an  unpleasant  crisis  had  arisen 
with  his  monkey. 

The  temper  of  that  imperfect  acolyth  was  a  little  tried  by 
the  over-active  discipline  of  his  colleague  in  the  surplice,  and 
a   sudden  cuff  administered  as  his  taper  fell  to  a  horizontal 


134  ROMOLA. 

position,  caused  him  to  leap  back  with  a  violence  that  proved 
too  much  for  the  slackened  knot  by  which  his  cord  was 
fastened.  His  first  leap  was  to  the  other  end  of  the  table, 
from  which  position  his  remonstrances  were  so  threatening, 
that  the  imp  in  the  surplice  took  up  a  wand  by  way  of  an 
equivalent  threat,  whereupon  the  monkey  leaped  on  to  the 
head  of  a  tall  woman  in  the  foreground,  dropping  his  taper  by 
the  way,  and  chattering  with  increased  emphasis  from  that 
eminence.  Great  was  the  screaming  and  confusion,  not  a  few 
of  the  spectators  having  a  vague  dread  of  the  Maestro's 
monkey,  as  capable  of  more  hidden  mischief  than  mere  teeth 
and  claws  could  inflict ;  and  the  conjuror  himself  was  in  some 
alarm  lest  any  harm  should  happen  to  his  familiar.  In  the 
scuffle  to  seize  the  monkey's  string,  Tito  got  out  of  the  circle, 
and,  not  caring  to  contend  for  his  place  again,  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  gradually  pushed  towards  the  church  of  the 
Nunziata,  and  to  enter  amongst  the  worshippers. 

The  brilliant  illumination  within  seemed  to  press  upon  his 
eyes  with  palpable  force  after  the  pale  scattered  lights  and 
broad  shadows  of  the  piazza,  and  for  the  first  minute  or  two 
he  could  see  nothing  distinctly.  That  yellow  splendor  was 
in  itself  something  supernatural  and  heavenly  to  many  of  the 
peasant  women,  for  whom  half  the  sky  was  hidden  by 
mountains,  and  who  went  to  bed  in  the  twilight;  and  the 
uninterrupted  chant  from  the  choir  was  repose  to  the  ear 
after  the  hellish  hubbub  of  the  crowd  outside.  Gradually  the 
scene  became  clearer,  though  still  there  was  a  thin  yellow  haze 
from  incense  mingling  with  the  breath  of  the  multitude.  In 
a  chapel  on  the  left  hand  of  the  nave,  wreathed  with  silver 
lamps,  was  seen  unveiled  the  miraculous  fresco  of  the 
Annunciation,  which,  in  Tito's  oblique  view  of  it  from  the 
right-hand  side  of  the  nave,  seem.ed  dark  with  the  excess  of 
light  around  it.  The  whole  area  of  the  great  church  was 
filled  with  peasant  women,  some  kneeling,  some  standing ; 
the  coarse  bronzed  skins,  and  the  dingy  clothing  of  the  rougher 
dwellers  on  the  mountains,  contrasting  with  the  softer-lined 
faces  and  white  or  red  head-drapery  of  the  well-to-do  dwellers 
in  the  valley,  who  were  scattered  in  irregular  groups.  And 
spreading  high  and  far  over  the  walls  and  ceiling  there  was 
another  multitude,  also  pressing  close  against  each  other,  that 
they  might  be  nearer  tlie  potent  Virgin.  It  was  the  crowd  of 
votive  waxen  images,  the  effigies  of  great  personages,  clothed 
in  their  habit  as  they  lived :  Florentines  of  high  name,  in 
their  black  silk  lucco,  as  when  they  sat  in  council;    popes, 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  135 

emperors,  kings,  cardinals,  and  famous  condottieri  with 
plumed  morion  seated  on  their  chargers ;  all  notable  strangers 
who  passed  through  Florence  or  had  aught  to  do  with  its 
affairs  —  Mohammedans,  even,  in  well-tolerated  companion- 
ship with  Christian  cavaliers ;  some  of  them  with  faces 
blackened  and  robes  tattered  by  the  corroding  breath  of 
centuries,  others  fresh  and  bright  in  new  red  mantle  or  steel 
corselet,  the  exact  doubles  of  the  living.  And  wedged  in 
with  all  these  were  detached  arms,  legs,  and  other  members, 
with  only  here  and  there  a  gap  where  some  image  had  been 
removed  for  public  disgrace,  or  had  fallen  ominously,  as 
Lorenzo's  had  done  six  months  before.  It  was  a  perfect 
resurrection-swarm  of  remote  mortals  and  fragments  of 
mortals,  reflecting,  in  their  varying  degrees  of  freshness,  the 
sombre  dinginess  and  sprinkled  brightness  of  the  crowd 
below. 

Tito's  glance  «vandered  over  the  wild  multitude  in  search  of 
something.  He  had  already  thought  of  Tessa,  and  the  white 
hoods  suggested  the  possibility  that  he  might  detect  her  face 
under  one  of  them.  It  was  at  least  a  thought  to  be  courted, 
rather  than  the  vision  of  Komola  looking  at  him  with  changed 
eyes.  But  he  searched  in  vain ;  and  he  was  leaving  the 
church,  weary  of  a  scene  which  had  no  variety,  when,  just 
against  the  doorway,  he  caught  sight  of  Tessa,  only  two  yards 
off  him.  She  was  kneeling  with  her  back  against  the  wall, 
behind  a  group  of  peasant  women,  who  were  standing  and 
looking  for  a  spot  nearer  to  the  sacred  image.  Her  head  hung 
a  little  aside  with  a  look  of  weariness,  and  her  blue  eyes  were 
directed  rather  absently  towards  an  altar-piece  where  the 
Archangel  Michael  stood  in  his  armor,  with  young  face  and 
floating  hair,  amongst  bearded  and  tonsured  saints.  Her  right 
hand,  holding  a  bunch  of  cocoons,  fell  by  her  side  listlessly, 
and  her  round  cheek  was  paled,  either  by  the  light  or  by  the 
weariness  that  was  expressed  in  her  attitude :  her  lips  were 
pressed  poutingly  together,  and  every  now  and  then  her  eyelids 
half  fell :  she  was  a  large  image  of  a  sweet  sleepy  child.  Tito 
felt  an  irresistible  desire  to  go  up  to  her  and  get  her  pretty 
trusting  looks  and  prattle:  this  creature  who  was  without 
moral  judgment  that  could  condemn  him,  whose  little  loving 
ignorant  soul  made  a  world  apart,  where  he  might  feel  in 
freedom  from  suspicions  and  exacting  demands,  had  a  new 
attraction  for  him  now.  She  seemed  a  refuge  from  the 
threatened  isolation  that  would  come  with  disgrace.  He 
glanced  cautiously  round,  to  assure  himself  that  Monna  Ghita 


136  ROMOLA. 

was  not  near,  and  then,  slipping  quietly  to  her  side,  kneeled 
on  one  knee,  and  said,  in  the  softest  voice,  "  Tessa  ! " 

She  hardly  started,  any  more  than  she  would  have  started 
at  a  soft  breeze  that  fanned  her  gently  when  she  was  needing 
it.  She  turned  her  head  and  saw  Tito's  face  close  to  her  :  it 
was  very  much  more  beautiful  than  the  Archangel  Michael's, 
who  was  so  mighty  and  so  good  that  he  lived  with  the 
Madonna  and  all  the  saints  and  was  prayed  to  along  with 
them.  She  smiled  in  happy  silence,  for  that  nearness  of  Tito 
quite  filled  her  mind. 

"  My  little  Tessa  !  you  look  very  tired.  How  long  have  you 
been  kneeling  here  ?  " 

She  seemed  to  be  collecting  her  thoughts  for  a  minute  or 
two,  and  at  last  she  said,  — 

*'  I'm  very  hungry." 

"  Come,  then ;  come  with  me." 

He  lifted  her  from  her  knees,  and  led  her  out  under  the 
cloisters  surrounding  the  atrium,  which  were  then  open,  and 
not  yet  adorned  with  the  frescoes  of  Andrea  del  Sarto. 

"  How  is  it  you  are  all  by  yourself,  and  so  hungry,  Tessa  ?  " 

"  The  Madre  is  ill ;  she  has  very  bad  pains  in  her  legs,  and 
sent  me  to  bring  these  cocoons  to  the  Santissima  Nunziata, 
because  they're  so  wonderful ;  see !  "  — she  held  up  the  bunch 
of  cocoons,  which  were  arranged  with  fortuitous  regularity  on 
a  stem,  —  "  and  she  had  kept  them  to  bring  them  herself,  but 
she  couldn't,  and  so  she  sent  me  because  she  thinks  the  Holy 
Madonna  may  take  away  her  pains ;  and  somebody  took  my 
bag -with  the  bread  and  chestnuts  in  it,  and  the  people  pushed 
me  back,  and  I  was  so  frightened  coming  in  the  crowd,  and  i 
couldn't  get  anywhere  near  the  Holy  Madonna,  to  give  the 
cocoons  to  the  Padre,  but  I  must  —  oh,  I  must." 

"  Yes,  my  little  Tessa,  you  shall  take  them  ;  but  first  come 
and  let  me  give  you  some  berlingozzi.  There  are  some  to  be 
had  not  far  off." 

"  Where  did  you  come  from  ?  "  said  Tessa,  a  little  bewil- 
dered. "  I  thought  you  would  never  come  to  me  again, 
because  you  never  came  to  the  Mercato  for  milk  any  more. 
I  set  myself  Aves  to  say,  to  see  if  they  would  bring  you  back, 
but  I  left  off,  because  they  didn't." 

"  You  see  I  come  when  you  want  some  one  to  take  care  of 
you,  Tessa.  Perhaps  the  Aves  fetched  me,  only  it  took  them 
a  long  while.  But  what  shall  you  do  if  you  are  here  all 
alone  ?     Where  shall  you  go  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  shall  stay  and  sleep  in  the  church  —  a  great  many 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  137 

of  them  do  —  in  the  church  and  all  about  here  —  I  did  once 
when  I  came  with  my  mother;  and  the  patrigno  is  coming 
with  the  mules  in  the  morning." 

They  were  out  in  the  piazza  now,  where  the  crowd  was 
rather  less  riotous  than  before,  and  the  lights  were  fewer,  the 
stream  of  pilgrims  having  ceased.  Tessa  clung  fast  to  Tito's 
arm  in  satisfied  silence,  while  he  led  her  towards  the  stall 
where  he  remembered  seeing  the  eatables.  Their  way  was 
the  easier  because  there  was  just  now  a  great  rush  towards 
the  middle  of  the  piazza,  where  the  masked  figures  on  stilts 
had  found  space  to  execute  a  dance.  It  was  very  pretty  to 
see  the  guileless  thing  giving  her  cocoons  into  Tito's  hand, 
and  then  eating  her  berlingozzi  with  the  relish  of  a  hungry 
child.  Tito  had  really  come  to  take  care  of  her,  as  he  did 
before,  and  that  wonderful  happiness  of  being  with  him  had 
begun  again  for  her.  Her  hunger  was  soon  appeased,  all  the 
sooner  for  the  new  stimulus  of  happiness  that  had  roused  her 
from  her  languor,  and,  as  they  turned  away  from  the  stall, 
she  said  nothing  about  going  into  the  church  again,  but  looked 
round  as  if  the  sights  in  the  piazza  were  not  without  attraction 
to  her  now  she  was  safe  under  Tito's  arm. 

''  How  can  they  do  that  ?  "  she  exclaimed,  looking  up  at  the 
dancers  on  stilts.  Then,  after  a  minute's  silence,  "  Do  you 
think  Saint  Christopher  helps  them  ?  " 

"  Perhaps.  What  do  you  think  about  it,  Tessa  ? "  said 
Tito,  slipping  his  right  arm  round  her,  and  looking  down  at 
her  fondly. 

"  Because  Saint  Christopher  is  so  very  tall ;  and  he  is  very 
good  :  if  anybody  looks  at  him  he  takes  care  of  them  all  day. 
He  is  on  the  wall  of  the  church  —  too  tall  to  stand  up  there 
—  but  I  saw  him  walking  through  the  streets  one  San  Gio- 
vanni, carrying  the  little  Gesu." 

"  You  pretty  pigeon !  Do  you  think  anybody  could  help 
taking  care  of  y<m,  if  you  looked  at  them  ?  *' 

"  Shall  you  always  come  and  take  care  of  me  ?  "  said  Tessa, 
turning  her  face  up  to  him,  as  he  crushed  her  cheek  with  his 
left  hand.     "  And  shall  you  always  be  a  long  while  first  ?  " 

Tito  was  conscious  that  some  bystanders  were  laughing  at 
them,  and  though  the  license  of  street  fun,  among  artists  and 
young  men  of  the  wealthier  sort  as  well  as  among  the  popu- 
lace, made  few  adventures  exceptional,  still  less  disreputable, 
he  chose  to  move  away  towards  the  end  of  the  piazza. 

"  Perhaps  I  shall  come  again  to  you  very  soon,  Tessa,"  he 
answered,  rather  dreamily,  when  they  had  moved  away.     He 


138  ROMOLA. 

was  thinking  that  when  all  the  rest  had  turned  their  backs 
upon  him,  it  would  be  pleasant  to  have  this  little  creature 
adoring  hina  and  nestling  against  him.  The  absence  of  pre 
sumptuous  self-conceit  in  Tito  made  him  feel  all  the  more 
defenceless  under  prospective  obloquy :  he  needed  soft  looks 
and  caresses  too  much  ever  to  be  impudent. 

"  In  the  Mercato  ?  "  said  Tessa.  "Not  to  morrow  mornings 
because  the  patrigno  will  be  there,  and  he  is  so  cross.  Oh ! 
but  you  have  money,  and  he  will  not  be  cross  if  you  buy  some 
salad.  And  there  are  some  chestnuts.  Do  you  like  chest- 
nuts ?  " 

He  said  nothing,  but  continued  to  look  down  at  her  with  a 
dreamy  gentleness,  and  Tessa  felt  herself  in  a  state  of  deli- 
cious wonder ;  everything  seemed  as  new  as  if  she  were  being 
carried  on  a  chariot  of  clouds. 

"  Holy  Virgin ! "  she  exclaimed  again  presently.  "There  is 
a  holy  father  like  the  Bishop  T  saw  at  Prato." 

Tito  looked  up  too,  and  saw  that  he  had  unconsciously 
advanced  to  within  a  few  yards  of  the  conjuror.  Maestro 
Vaiano,  who  for  the  moment  was  forsaken  by  the  crowd. 
His  face  was  turned  away  from  them,  and  he  was  occupied 
with  the  apparatus  on  his  altar  or  table,  preparing  a  new 
diversion  by  the  time  the  interest  in  the  dancing  should  be 
exhausted.  The  monkey  was  imprisoned  under  the  red  cloth, 
out  of  reach  of  mischief,  and  the  youngster  in  the  white  sur- 
plice was  holding  a  sort  of  dish  or  salver,  from  which  his 
master  was  taking  some  ingredient.  The  altar-like  table, 
with  its  gorgeous  cloth,  the  row  of  tapers,  the  sham  episcopal 
costume,  the  surpliced  attendant,  and  even  the  movements  of 
the  mitred  figure,  as  he  alternatel}-  bent  his  head  and  then 
raised  something  before  the  lights,  were  a  sufficiently  near 
parody  of  sacred  things  to  rouse  poor  little  Tessa's  venera- 
tion ;  and  there  was  some  additional  awe  produced  by  the 
mystery  of  their  apparition  in  this  spot,  for  when  she  had 
seen  an  altar  in  the  street  before,  it  had  been  on  Corpus 
Christi  Day,  and  there  had  been  a  procession  to  account  for 
it.  She  crossed  herself  and  looked  up  at  Tito,  but  then,  as  if 
she  had  had  time  for  reflection,  said,  "  It  is  because  of  the 
Nativity." 

Meanwhile  Vaiano  had  turned  round,  raising  his  hands  to 
his  mitre  with  the  intention  of  changing  his  dress,  when  his 
quick  eye  recognized  Tito  and  Tessa,  who  were  both  looking 
at  him,  their  faces  being  shone  upon  by  the  light  of  his  tapers, 
while  his  own  was  in  shadow. 


THE  PEASANTS'  FAIR.  139 

"  Ha !  my  children  !  "  he  said,  instantly,  stretching  out  his 
hands  in  a  benedictory  attitude,  "  you  are  come  to  be  mar- 
ried. I  commend  your  penitence  —  the  blessing  of  Holy 
Church  can  never  come  too  late." 

But  whilst  he  was  speaking,  he  had  taken  in  the  whole 
meaning  of  Tessa's  attitude  and  expression,  and  he  discerned 
an  opportunity  for  a  new  kind  of  joke  which  required  him  to 
be  cautious  and  solemn. 

"  Should  you  like  to  be  married  to  me,  Tessa  ?  "  said  Tito, 
softly,  half  enjoying  the  comedy,  as  he  saw  the  pretty  childish 
seriousness  on  her  face,  half  prompted  by  hazy  previsions 
which  belonged  to  the  intoxication  of  despair. 

He  felt  her  vibrating  before  she  looked  up  at  him  and  said, 
timidly,  "  Will  you  let  me  ?  " 

He  answered  only  by  a  smile,  and  by  leading  her  forward 
in  front  of  the  cerretcmo,  who,  seeing  an  excellent  jest  in 
Tessa's  evident  delusion,  assumed  a  surpassing  sacerdotal 
solemnity,  and  went  through  the  mimic  ceremony  with  a 
liberal  expenditure  of  I'mgua  furbesca  or  thieves'  Latin.  But 
some  symptoms  of  a  new  movement  in  the  crowd  urged  him 
to  bring  it  to  a  speedy  conclusion  and  dismiss  them  with 
hands  outstretched  in  a  benedictory  attitude  over  their  kneel- 
ing figures.  Tito,  disposed  always  to  cultivate  good-will, 
though  it  might  be  the  least  select,  put  a  piece  of  four  grossi 
into  his  hand  as  he  moved  away,  and  was  thanked  by  a  look 
which,  the  conjuror  felt  sure,  conveyed  a  perfect  understand- 
ing of  the  whole  affair. 

But  Tito  himself  was  very  far  from  that  understanding, 
and  did  not,  in  fact,  know  whether,  the  next  moment,  he 
should  tell  Tessa  of  the  joke  and  laugh  at  her  for  a  little 
goose,  or  whether  he  should  let  her  delusion  last,  and  see 
what  would  come  of  it  —  see  what  she  would  say  and  do  next. 

"Then  you  will  not  go  away  from  me  again,"  said  Tessa, 
after  they  had  walked  a  few  steps,  "  and  you  will  take  me  to 
where  you  live."  She  spoke  meditatively,  and  not  in  a  ques- 
tioning tone.  But  presently  she  added,  "  I  must  go  back  once 
to  the  Madre  though,  to  tell  her  I  brought  the  cocoons,  and 
that  I  am  married,  and  shall  not  go  back  again." 

Tito  felt  the  necessity  of  speaking  now ;  and  in  the  rapid 
thought  prompted  by  that  necessity,  he  saw  that  by  undeceiv- 
ing Tessa  he  should  be  robbing  himself  of  some  at  least  of 
that  pretty  trustfulness  which  might,  by  and  by,  be  his  only 
haven  from  contempt.  It  would  spoil  Tessa  to  make  her  the 
least  particle  wiser  or  more  suspicious. 


140  ROMOLA. 

"  Yes,  my  little  Tessa,"  he  said,  caressingly,  "  you  must  go 
back  to  the  Madre ;  but  you  must  not  tell  her  you  are  married 
—  you  must  keep  that  a  secret  from  everybody;  else  some 
very  great  harm  would  happen  to  me,  and  you  would  never 
see  me  again." 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  fear  in  her  face. 

"  You  must  go  back  and  feed  your  goats  and  mules,  and  dc 
just  as  you  have  always  done  before,  and  say  no  word  to  any 
one  about  me." 

The  corners  of  her  mouth  fell  a  little. 

"And  then,  perhaps,  I  shall  come  and  take  care  of  you 
again  when  you  want  me,  as  I  did  before.  But  you  must  do 
just  what  I  tell  you,  else  you  will  not  see  me  again." 

"  Yes,  I  will,  I  will,"  she  said,  in  a  loud  whisper,  frightened 
at  that  blank  prospect. 

They  were  silent  a  little  while ;  and  then  Tessa,  looking  at. 
her  hand,  said,  — 

'*  The  Madre  wears  a  betrothal  ring.  She  went  to  church 
and  had  it  put  on,  and  then  after  that,  another  day,  she  was 
married.  And  so  did  the  cousin  Nannina.  But  then  site 
married  Gollo,"  added  the  poor  little  thing,  entangled  in  the 
difficult  comparison  between  her  own  case  and  others  within 
her  experience. 

"  But  you  must  not  wear  a  betrothal  ring,  my  Tessa,  because 
no  one  must  know  you  are  married,"  said  Tito,  feeling  some 
insistence  necessary.  "  And  the  huona  fortuna  that  I  gave 
you  did  just  as  well  for  betrothal.  Some  people  are  betrothed 
with  rings,  and  some  are  not." 

"  Yes,  it  is  true,  they  would  see  the  ring,"  said  Tessa,  trying 
to  convince  herself  that  a  thing  she  would  like  very  much  was 
really  not  good  for  her. 

They  were  now  near  the  entrance  of  the  church  again, 
and  she  remembered  her  cocoons  which  were  still  in  Tito's 
hand. 

"  Ah,  you  must  give  me  the  hoto,^''  she  said ;  "  and  we  must 
go  in,  and  I  must  take  it  to  the  Padre,  and  I  must  tell  the  rest 
of  my  beads,  because  I  was  too  tired  before." 

"  Yes,  you  must  go  in,  Tessa ;  but  I  will  not  go  in.  I  must 
leave  you  now,"  said  Tito,  too  feverish  and  weary  to  re-enter 
that  stifling  heat,  and  feeling  that  this  was  the  least  difficult 
way  of  parting  with  her. 

"  And  not  come  back  ?  Oh,  where  do  you  go  ? "  Tessa's 
mind  had  never  formed  an  image  of  his  whereabouts  or  his 
doings  when  she  did  not  see  him :  he  had  vanished,  and  her 


THE  DYING  MESSAGE.  141 

thought,  instead  of  following  him,  had  stayed  in  the  same 
spot  where  he  was  with  her. 

"  I  shall  come  back  some  time,  Tessa,"  said  Tito,  taking  her 
under  the  cloisters  to  the  door  of  the  church.  "  You  must  not 
cry  —  you  must  go  to  sleep,  when  you  have  said  your  beads. 
And  here  is  money  to  buy  your  breakfast.  Now  kiss  me,  and 
look  happy,  else  I  shall  not  come  again." 

She  made  a  great  effort  over  herself  as  she  put  up  her  lips 
to  kiss  him,  and  submitted  to  be  gently  turned  round,  with 
her  face  towards  the  door  of  the  church.  Tito  saw  her  enter ; 
and  then  with  a  shrug  at  his  own  resolution,  leaned  against  a 
pillar,  took  off  his  cap,  rubbed  his  hair  backward,  and  won- 
dered where  Romola  was  now,  and  what  she  was  thinking  of 
him.  Poor  little  Tessa  had  disappeared  behind  the  curtain 
among  the  crowd  of  peasants  ;  but  the  love  which  formed  one 
web  with  all  his  worldly  hopes,  with  the  ambitions  and  pleas- 
ures that  must  make  the  solid  part  of  his  days  —  the  love  that 
was  identified  with  his  larger  self  —  was  not  to  be  banished 
from  his  consciousness.  Even  to  the  man  who  presents  the 
most  elastic  resistance  to  whatever  is  unpleasant,  there  will 
come  moments  when  the  pressure  from  without  is  too  strong 
for  him,  and  he  must  feel  the  smart  and  the  bruise  in  spite  of 
himself.  Such  a  moment  had  come  to  Tito.  There  was  no 
possible  attitude  of  mind,  no  scheme  of  action,  by  which  the 
uprooting  of  all  his  newly  planted  hopes  could  be  made  other- 
wise than  painful. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE    DYING    MESSAGE. 

When  Romola  arrived  at  the  entrance  of  San  Marco  she 
found  one  of  the  Frati  waiting  there  in  expectation  of  hei 
arrival.  Monna  Brigida  retired  into  the  adjoining  church,  and 
Romola  was  conducted  to  the  door  of  the  chapter-house  in  the 
outer  cloister,  whither  the  invalid  had  been  conveyed ;  no 
woman  being  allowed  admission  beyond  this  precinct. 

When  the  door  opened,  the  subdued  external  light  blending 
with  that  of  two  tapers  placed  behind  a  truckle-bed  showed 
the  emaciated  face  of  Fra  Luca,  with  the  tonsured  crown  of 
golden  hair  above  it,  and  with  deep-sunken  hazel  e3^es  fixed  on 
a  small  crucifix  which  he  held  before  him.     He  was  propped 


142  ROM  OLA. 

up  into  nearly  a  sitting  posture ;  and  Romola  was  just  con- 
scious, as  she  threw  aside  her  veil,  that  there  was  another 
monk  standing  by  the  bed,  with  the  black  cowl  drawn  over  his 
head,  and  that  he  moved  towards  the  door  as  she  entered  ;  just 
conscious  that  in  the  background  there  was  a  crucified  form 
rising  high  and  pale  on  the  frescoed  wall,  and  pale  faces  of  sor- 
row looking  out  from  it  below. 

The  next  moment  her  eyes  met  Fra  Luca's  as  they  looked 
up  at  her  from  the  crucifix,  and  she  was  absorbed  in  that  pang 
of  recognition  which  identified  this  monkish  emaciated  form 
with  the  image  of  her  fair  young  brother. 

"  Dino !  "  she  said,  in  a  voice  like  a  low  cry  of  pain.  But 
she  did  not  bend  towards  him ;  she  held  herself  erect,  and 
paused  at  two  yards'  distance  from  him.  There  was  an  uncon- 
querable repulsion  for  her  in  that  monkish  aspect ;  it  seemed 
to  her  the  brand  of  the  dastardly  undutifulness  which  had  left 
her  father  desolate  —  of  the  grovelling  superstition  which 
could  give  such  undutifulness  the  name  of  piet3^  Her  father, 
whose  proud  sincerity  and  simplicity  of  life  had  made  him  one 
of  the  few  frank  pagans  of  his  time,  had  brought  her  up  with 
a  silent  ignoring  of  any  claims  the  Church  could  have  to  regu- 
late the  belief  and  action  of  beings  with  a  cultivated  reason. 
The  Church,  in  her  mind,  belonged  to  that  actual  life  of  the 
mixed  multitude  from  which  they  had  always  lived  apart,  and 
she  had  no  ideas  that  could  render  her  brother's  course  an  ob- 
ject of  any  other  feeling  than  incurious,  indignant  contempt. 
Yet  the  loviuguess  of  Romola's  soul  had  clung  to  that  image 
in  the  past,  and  while  she  stood  rigidly  aloof,  there  was  a 
yearning  search  in  her  eyes  for  something  too  faintly  dis- 
cernible. 

But  there  was  no  corresponding  emotion  in  the  face  of  the 
monk.  He  looked  at  the  little  sister  returned  to  him  in  her 
full  womanly  beauty,  with  the  far-off  gaze  of  a  revisiting 
spirit. 

"  My  sister !  "  he  said,  with  a  feeble  and  interrupted  but  yet 
distinct  utterance,  "it  is  well  thou  hast  not  longer  delayed  to 
come,  for  I  have  a  message  to  deliver  to  thee,  and  my  time  is 
short." 

Romola  took  a  step  nearer :  the  message,  she  thought,  would 
be  one  of  alfectionate  penitence  to  her  father,  and  her  heart  be- 
gan to  open.  Notliing  could  wipe  out  the  long  years  of  deser- 
tion ;  but  the  culprit,  looking  back  on  those  years  with  the  sense 
of  irremediable  wrong  committed,  would  call  forth  }v,ty.  Now, 
at  the  last,  there  would  be  understanding  and  forgiveness.    Diuo 


THE  DYING  MESSAGE.  143 

would  pour  out  some  natural  filial  feeling ;  he  would  ask  ques- 
tions about  his  father's  blindness  —  how  rapidly  it  had  come 
on  ?  how  the  long  dark  days  had  been  filled  ?  what  the  life  was 
now  in  the  home  where  he  himself  had  been  nourished  ?  —  and 
the  last  message  from  the  dying  lips  would  be  one  of  tender- 
ness and  regret. 

"  Romola,"  Fra  Luca  began,  '*  I  have  had  a  vision  concern- 
ing thee.  Thrice  I  have  had  it  in  the  last  two  months  :  each 
time  it  has  been  clearer.  Therefore  I  came  from  Fiesole  deem- 
ing it  a  message  from  Heaven  that  I  was  bound  to  deliver.  And 
I  gather  a  promise  of  mercy  to  thee  in  this,  that  my  breath  is 
preserved  in  order  to  "  — 

The  difficult  breathing  which  continually  interrupted  him 
would  not  let  him  finish  the  sentence. 

Romola  had  felt  her  heart  chilling  again.  It  was  a  vision, 
then,  this  message  —  one  of  those  visions  she  had  so  often  heard 
her  father  allude  to  with  bitterness.  Her  indignation  rushed 
to  her  lips. 

"  Dino,  I  thought  you  had  some  words  to  send  to  my  father. 
You  forsook  him  when  his  sight  was  failing ;  you  made  his  life 
very  desolate.  Have  you  never  cared  about  that  ?  never  re- 
pented ?  What  is  this  religion  of  yours,  that  places  visions 
before  natural  duties  ?  " 

The  deep-sunken  hazel  eyes  turned  slowly  towards  her  and 
rested  upon  her  in  silence  for  some  moments,  as  if  he  were 
meditating  whether  he  should  answer  her. 

"  No,"  he  said  at  last :  speaking  as  before,  in  a  low  passion- 
less tone,  as  of  some  spirit  not  human,  speaking  through  dying 
human  organs.  "  Xo  ;  I  have  never  repented  fleeing  from  the 
stifling  poison-breath  of  sin  that  was  hot  and  thick  around  me 
and  threatened  to  steal  over  my  senses  like  besotting  wine. 
My  father  could  not  hear  the  voice  that  called  me  night  and 
day  ;  he  knew  nothing  of  the  demon  tempters  that  tried  to  drag 
me  back  from  following  it.  My  father  has  lived  amidst  human 
sin  and  misery  without  believing  in  them :  he  has  been  like 
one  busy  picking  shining  stones  in  a  mine,  while  there  was  a 
world  dying  of  plague  above  him.  I  spoke,  but  he  listened 
with  scorn.  I  told  him  the  studies  he  wished  me  to  live  for 
were  either  childish  trifling  —  dead  toys  —  or  else  they  must 
be  made  warm  and  living  by  pulses  that  beat  to  worldly  am- 
bitions and  fleshly  lusts,  for  worldly  ambitions  and  fleshly  lusts 
made  all  the  substance  of  the  poetry  and  history  he  wanted  me 
to  bend  my  eyes  on  continually." 

"  Has  not  my  father  led  a  pure  and  noble    life,   then  ? " 


144  ROMOLA. 

Romola  burst  forth,  unable  to  hear  in  silence  this  implied 
accusation  against  her  father.  "  He  has  sought  no  worldly 
honors ;  he  has  been  truthful ;  he  has  denied  himself  all 
luxuries ;  he  has  lived  like  one  of  the  ancient  sages.  He 
never  wished  you  to  live  for  worldly  ambitions  and  fleshly 
lusts ;  he  wished  you  to  live  as  he  himself  has  done,  according 
to  the  purest  maxims  of  philosophy,  in  which  he  brought  you 
up." 

Komola  spoke  partly  by  rote,  as  all  ardent  and  sympathetic 
young  creatures  do ;  but  she  spoke  with  intense  belief.  The 
pink  flush  was  in  her  face,  and  she  quivered  from  head  to 
foot.  Her  brother  was  again  slow  to  answer ;  looking  at  her 
passionate  face  with  strange  passionless  eyes. 

"  What  were  the  maxims  of  philosophy  to  me  ?  They  told 
me  to  be  strong,  when  1  felt  myself  weak ;  when  I  was  ready, 
like  the  blessed  Saint  Benedict,  to  roll  myself  among  thorns, 
and  court  smarting  wounds  as  a  deliverance  from  temptation. 
For  the  Divine  love  had  sought  me,  and  penetrated  me,  and 
created  a  great  need  in  me  ;  like  a  seed  that  wants  room  to 
grow.  I  had  been  brought  up  in  carelessness  of  the  true 
faith ;  I  had  not  studied  the  doctrines  of  our  religion  ;  but  it 
seemed  to  take  possession  of  me  like  a  rising  flood.  I  felt 
that  there  was  a  life  of  perfect  love  and  purity  for  the  soul ; 
in  which  there  would  be  no  uneasy  hunger  after  pleasure,  no 
tormenting  questions,  no  fear  of  suffering.  Before  I  knew 
the  history  of  the  saints,  I  had  a  foreshadowing  of  their 
ecstasy.  For  the  same  truth  had  penetrated  even  into  pagan 
philosophy  :  that  it  is  a  bliss  within  the  reach  of  man  to  die 
to  mortal  needs,  and  live  in  the  life  of  God  as  the  Unseen 
Perfectness.  But  to  attain  that  I  must  forsake  the  world ;  I 
must  have  no  affection,  no  hope,  wedding  me  to  that  which 
passeth  away ;  I  must  live  with  my  fellow-beings  only  as 
human  souls  related  to  the  eternal  unseen  life.  That  need 
was  urging  me  continually  :  it  came  over  me  in  visions  when 
my  mind  fell  away  weary  from  the  vain  words  which  record 
the  passions  of  dead  men  :  it  came  over  me  after  I  had  been 
tempted  into  sin  and  had  turned  away  with  loathing  from  the 
scent  of  the  emptied  cup.  And  in  visions  I  saw  the  meaning 
of  the  Crucifix." 

He  paused,  breathing  hard  for  a  minute  or  two  :  but  Roniola 
was  not  prompted  to  speak  again.  It  was  useless  for  her 
mind  to  attempt  any  contact  with  the  mind  of  this  unearthly 
brother :  as  useless  as  for  her  hand  to  try  and  grasp  a 
shadow.    When  he  spoke  again,  his  heaving  chest  was  quieter. 


THE  DYING  MESSAGE.  145 

"I  felt  whom  I  must  follow:  but  I  saw  that  even  among 
the  servants  of  the  Cross  who  professed  to  have  renounced  the 
world,  my  soul  would  be  stifled  with  the  fumes  of  hypocrisy, 
and  lust,  and  pride.  God  had  not  chosen  me,  as  he  chose 
Saint  Dominic  and  Saint  Francis,  to  wrestle  with  evil  in  the 
Church  and  in  the  world.  He  called  upon  me  to  flee  :  I  took 
the  sacred  vows,  and  I  fled  —  fled  to  lands  where  danger  and 
scorn  and  want  bore  me  continually,  like  angels,  to  repose  o\\ 
the  bosom  of  God.  I  have  lived  the  life  of  a  hermit,  I  have 
ministered  to  pilgrims  ;  but  my  task  has  been  short :  the  veil 
has  worn  very  thin  that  divides  me  from  my  everlasting  rest. 
I  came  back  to  Florence  that " — 

''Dino,  you  did  want  to  know  if  my  father  was  alive," 
interrupted  Eomola,  the  picture  of  that  suffering  life  touch- 
ing her  again  with  the  desire  for  union  and  forgiveness. 

"  —  That  before  I  died  I  might  urge  others  of  our  brethren 
to  study  the  Eastern  tongues,  as  I  had  not  done,  and  go  out 
to  greater  ends  than  I  did ;  and  I  find  them  already  bent  on 
the  work.  And  since  I  came,  Romola,  I  have  felt  that  I  was 
sent  partly  to  thee  —  not  to  renew  the  bonds  of  earthly  affec- 
tion, but  to  deliver  the  heavenly  warning  conveyed  in  a  vision. 
For  I  have  had  that  vision  thrice.  And  through  all  the  years 
since  first  the  Divine  voice  called  me,  while  I  was  yet  in  the 
world,  I  have  been  taught  and  guided  by  visions.  For  in  the 
painful  linking  together  of  our  waking  thoughts  we  can  never 
be  sure  that  we  have  not  mingled  our  own  error  with  the  light 
we  have  prayed  for ;  but  in  visions  and  dreams  we  are  pass- 
ive, and  our  souls  are  as  an  instrument  in  the  Divine  hand. 
Therefore  listen,  and  speak  not  again  —  for  the  time  is 
short." 

Romola's  mind  recoiled  strongly  from  listening  to  this 
vision.  Her  indignation  had  subsided,  but  it  was  only 
because  she  had  felt  the  distance  between  her  brother  and 
herself  widening.  But  while  Fra  Luca  was  speaking,  the 
figure  of  another  monk  had  entered,  and  again  stood  on  the 
other  side  of  the  bed,  with  the  cowl  drawn  over  his  head. 

"  Kneel,  my  daughter,  for  the  Angel  of  Death  is  present, 
and  waits  while  the  message  of  Heaven  is  delivered  :  bend  thy 
pride  before  it  is  bent  for  thee  by  a  yoke  of  iron,"  said  a 
strong,  rich  voice,  startlingly  in  contrast  with  Fra  Luea's. 

The  tone  was  not  that  of  imperious  command,  but  of  quiet 
self-possession  and  assurance  of  the  right,  blended  with 
benignity.  Eomola,  vibrating  to  the  sound,  looked  round  at 
the  figure  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  bed.     His  face   was 


146  ROM  OLA. 

hardly  discernible  under  the  shadow  of  the  cowl,  and  her  eyes 
fell  at  once  on  his  hands,  which  were  folded  across  his  breast 
and  lay  in  relief  on  the  edge  of  his  black  mantle.  They  had 
a  marked  physiognomy  which  enforced  the  influence  of  the 
voice ;  they  were  very  beautiful  and  almost  of  transparent 
delicacy.  Romola's  disposition  to  rebel  against  command, 
doubly  active  in  the  presence  of  monks,  whom  she  had  been 
taught  to  despise,  would  have  fixed  itself  on  any  repulsive 
detail  as  a  point  of  support.  But  the  face  was  hidden,  and 
the  hands  seemed  to  have  an  appeal  in  them  against  all  hard- 
ness. The  next  moment  the  right  hand  took  the  crucifix  to 
relieve  the  fatigued  grasp  of  Fra  Luca,  and  the  left  touched 
his  lips  with  a  wet  sponge  which  lay  near.  In  the  act  of 
bending,  the  cowl  was  pushed  back,  and  the  features  of  the 
monk  had  the  full  light  of  the  tapers  on  them.  They  were 
very  marked  features,  such  as  lend  themselves  to  popular 
description.  There  was  the  high  arched  nose,  the  prominent 
under  lip,  the  coronet  of  thick  dark  hair  above  the  brow,  all 
seeming  to  tell  of  energy  and  passion ;  there  were  the  blue- 
gray  eyes,  shining  mildly  under  auburn  eyelashes,  seeming, 
like  the  hands,  to  tell  of  acute  sensitiveness.  Romola  felt 
certain  they  were  the  features  of  Fra  Girolamo  Savonarola, 
the  prior  of  San  Marco,  whom  she  had  chiefly  thought  of  as 
more  offensive  than  other  monks,  because  he  was  more  noisy. 
Her  rebellion  was  rising  against  the  first  impression,  which 
had  almost  forced  her  to  bend  her  knees. 

"  Kneel,  my  daughter,"  the  penetrating  voice  said  again, 
"the  pride  of  the  body  is  a  barrier  against  the  gifts  that 
purify  the  soul." 

He  was  looking  at  her  with  mild  fixedness  while  he  spoke, 
and  again  she  felt  that  subtle  mysterious  influence  of  a 
personality  by  which  it  has  been  given  to  some  rare  men  to 
move  their  fellows. 

Slowly  Romola  fell  on  her  knees,  and  in  the  very  act  a 
tremor  came  over  her ;  in  the  renunciation  of  her  proud  erect- 
ness,  her  mental  attitude  seemed  changed,  and  she  found  her- 
self in  a  new  state  of  passiveness.  Her  brother  began  to 
speak  again :  — 

"  Romola,  in  the  deep  night,  as  I  lay  awake,  I  saw  my 
father's  room  —  the  library  —  with  all  the  books,  and  the 
marbles,  and  the  leggio,  where  I  used  to  stand  and  read  ;  and 
I  saw  you  —  you  were  revealed  to  me  as  I  see  you  now,  with 
fair  long  hair,  sitting  before  my  father's  chair.  And  at  the 
leggio  stood  a  man  whose  face  1  could  not  see.     I  looked  and 


SAVONAROLA. 


THE  DYING  MESSAGE.  147 

looked,  and  it  was  a  blank  to  me,  even  as  a  painting  effaced  . 
and  I  saw  him  move  and  take  thee,  Romola,  by  the  hand ; 
and  then  I  saw  thee  take  my  father  by  the  hand;  and  you  all 
three  went  down  the  stone  steps  into  the  streets,  the  man 
whose  face  was  a  blank  to  me  leading  the  way.  And  yon 
stood  at  the  altar  in  Santa  Croce,  and  the  priest  who  married 
you  had  the  face  of  death ;  and  the  graves  opened,  and  the 
dead  in  their  shrouds  rose  and  followed  you  like  a  bridal 
train.  And  you  passed  on  through  the  streets  and  the  gates 
into  the  valley,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  he  who  led  you 
hurried  you  more  than  you  could  bear,  and  the  dead  were 
weary  of  following  you,  and  turned  back  to  their  graves. 
And  at  last  you  came  to  a  stony  place  where  there  was  no 
water,  and  no  trees  or  herbage ;  but  instead  of  water,  I  saw 
written  parchment  unrolling  itself  everywhere,  and  instead  of 
trees  and  herbage  I  saw  men  of  bronze  and  marble  springing 
up  and  crowding  round  you.  And  my  father  was  faint  for 
want  of  water,  and  fell  to  the  ground ;  and  the  man  whose 
face  was  a  blank  loosed  thy  hand  and  departed :  and  as  he 
went  I  could  see  his  face ;  and  it  was  the  face  of  the  Great 
Tempter.  And  thou,  Romola,  didst  wring  thy  hands  and  seek 
for  water,  and  there  was  none.  And  the  bronze  and  marble 
figures  seemed  to  mock  thee  and  hold  out  cups  of  water,  and 
when  thou  didst  grasp  them  and  put  them  to  my  father's  lips, 
they  turned  to  parchment.  And  the  bronze  and  marble 
figures  seemed  to  turn  into  demons  and  snatch  my  father's 
body  from  thee,  and  the  parchments  shrivelled  up,  and  blood 
ran  everywhere  instead  of  them,  and  fire  upon  the  blood,  till 
they  all  vanished,  and  the  plain  was  bare  and  stony  again, 
and  thou  wast  alone  in  the  midst  of  it.  And  then  it  seemed 
that  the  night  fell,  and  I  saw  no  more.  .  .  .  Thrice  I  have 
had  that  vision,  Romola.  I  believe  it  is  a  revelation  meant 
for  thee :  to  warn  thee  against  marriage  as  a  temptation  of 
the  enemy ;  it  calls  upon  thee  to  dedicate  thyself  "  — 

His  pauses  had  gradually  become  longer  and  more  frequent, 
and  he  was  now  compelled  to  cease  by  a  severe  fit  of  gasping, 
in  which  his  eyes  were  turned  on  the  crucifix  as  on  a  light 
that  was  vanishing.  Presently  he  found  strength  to  speak 
again,  but  in  a  feebler,  scarcely  audible  tone :  — 

"  To  renounce  the  vain  philosophy  and  corrupt  thoughts  of 
the  heathens :  for  in  the  hour  of  sorrow  and  death  their  pride 
will  turn  to  mockery,  and  the  unclean  gods  will  "  — 

The  words  died  away. 

In  spite  of  the  thought  that  was  at  work  in  Romola,  telling 


148  ROMOLA. 

her  that  this  vision  was  no  more  than  a  dream,  fed  by  youth- 
ful memories  and  ideal  convictions,  a  strange  awe  had  come 
over  her.  Her  mind  was  not  apt  to  be  assailed  by  sickly  fan- 
cies ;  she  had  the  vivid  intellect  and  the  healthy  human  pas- 
sion, which  are  too  keenly  alive  to  the  constant  relations  of 
things  to  have  any  morbid  craving  after  the  exceptional. 
Still  the  images  of  the  vision  she  despised  jarred  and  dis- 
tressed her  like  painful  and  cruel  cries.  And  it  was  the  first 
time  she  had  witnessed  the  struggle  with  approaching  death  : 
her  3^oung  life  had  been  sombre,  but  she  had  known  nothing 
of  the  utmost  human  needs ;  no  acute  suffering  —  no  heart- 
cutting  sorrow ;  and  this  brother,  come  back  to  her  in  his 
hour  of  supreme  agony,  was  like  a  sudden  awful  apparition 
from  an  invisible  world.  The  pale  faces  of  sorrow  in  the 
fresco  on  the  opposite  wall  seemed  to  have  come  nearer,  and 
to  make  one  company  with  the  pale  face  on  the  bed. 

"  Frate,"  said  the  dying  voice. 

Fra  Girolamo  leaned  down.  But  no  other  word  came  for 
some  moments. 

"  Romola,"  it  said  next. 

She  leaned  forward  too  :  but  again  there  was  silence.  The 
words  were  struggling  in  vain. 

"  Fra  Girolamo,  give  her  "  — 

"The  crucifix,"  said  the  voice  of  Fra  Girolamo. 

No  other  sound  came  from  the  dying  lips. 

"  Dino !  "  said  Romola,  with  a  low  but  piercing  cry,  as  the 
certainty  came  upon  her  that  the  silence  of  misunderstanding 
could  never  be  broken. 

"  Take  the  crucifix,  my  daughter,"  said  Fra  Girolamo,  after 
a  few  minutes.     "  His  eyes  behold  it  no  more." 

Romola  stretched  out  her  hand  to  the  crucifix,  and  this  act 
appeared  to  relieve  the  tension  of  her  mind.  A  great  sob 
burst  from  her.  She  bowed  her  head  by  the  side  of  her  dead 
brother  and  wept  aloud. 

It  seemed  to  her  as  if  this  first  vision  of  death  must  alter 
the  daylight  for  her  for  evermore. 

Fra  Girolamo  moved  towards  the  door,  and  called  in  a  lay 
brother  who  was  waiting  outside.  Then  he  went  up  to  Romola 
and  said  in  a  tone  of  gentle  command,  "  Rise,  my  daughter, 
and  be  comforted.  Our  brother  is  with  the  blessed.  He  has 
left  you  the  crucifix,  in  remembrance  of  the  heavenly  warn- 
ing—  that  it  may  be  a  beacon  to  you  in  the  darkness." 

She  rose  from  her  knees,  trembling,  folded  her  veil  over  her 
head,  and  hid  the   crucifix  under  her  mantle.     Fra  Girolamo 


THE  DYING  MESSAGE.  149 

then  led  the  way  out  into  the  cloistered  court,  lit  now  only  by 
the  stars  and  by  a  lantern  which  was  held  by  some  one  near 
the  entrance.  Several  other  figures  in  the  dress  of  the  digni- 
fied laity  were  grouped  about  the  same  spot.  They  were  some 
of  the  numerous  frequenters  of  San  Marco,  who  had  come  to 
visit  the  Prior,  and  having  heard  that  he  was  in  attendance  on 
the  dying  brother  in  the  chapter-house,  had  awaited  him  here. 

Eomola  was  dimly  conscious  of  footsteps  and  rustling  forms 
moving  aside  :  she  heard  the  voice  of  Fra  Girolamo  saying,  in 
a  low  tone,  "  Our  brother  is  departed ;  "  she  felt  a  hand  laid 
on  her  arm.  The  next  moment  the  door  was  opened,  and  she 
was  out  in  the  wide  piazza  of  San  Marco,  with  no  one  but 
Monna  Brigida,  and  the  servant  carrying  tlie  lantern. 

The  fresh  sense  of  space  revived  her,  and  helped  her  to  re- 
cover her  self-mastery.  The  scene  which  had  just  closed  upon 
her  was  terribly  distinct  and  vivid,  but  it  began  to  narrow  under 
the  returning  impressions  of  the  life  that  lay  outside  it.  She 
hastened  her  steps,  with  nervous  anxiety  to  be  again  with  her 
father  —  and  with  Tito  —  for  were  they  not  together  in  her 
absence  ?  The  images  of  that  vision,  while  they  clung  about 
her  like  a  hideous  dream  not  yet  to  be  shaken  off,  made  her 
yearn  all  the  more  for  the  beloved  faces  and  voices  that  would 
assure  her  of  her  waking  life. 

Tito,  we  know,  was  not  with  Bardo;  his  destiny  was  being 
shaped  by  a  guilty  consciousness,  urging  on  him  the  despair- 
ing belief  that  by  this  time  Eomola  possessed  the  knowledge 
which  would  lead  to  their  final  separation. 

And  the  lips  that  could  have  conveyed  that  knowledge  were 
forever  closed.  The  prevision  that  Fra  Luca's  words  had  im- 
parted to  Roniola  had  been  such  as  comes  from  the  shadowy 
region  where  human  souls  seek  wisdom  apart  from  the  human 
sympathies  which  are  the  very  life  and  substance  of  our  wis- 
dom ;  the  revelation  that  might  have  come  from  the  simple 
questions  of  filial  and  brotherly  affection  had  been  carried 
into  irrevocable  silence. 


150  ROMOLA. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

▲    FLORENTINE    JOKE. 

Early  the  next  morning  Tito  was  returning  from  Bratti's 
shop  in  the  narrow  thoroughfare  of  the  Ferravecchi.  The 
Genoese  stranger  had  carried  away  the  onyx  ring,  and  Tito  was 
carrying  away  fifty  florins.  It  did  just  cross  his  mind  that  if, 
after  all,  Fortune,  by  one  of  her  able  devices,  saved  him  from 
the  necessity  of  quitting  Florence,  it  would  be  better  for  him 
not  to  have  parted  with  his  ring,  since  he  had  been  understood 
to  wear  it  for  the  sake  of  peculiar  memories  and  predilections  ; 
still,  it  was  a  slight  matter,  not  worth  dwelling  on  with  any 
emphasis,  and  in  those  moments  he  had  lost  his  confidence  in 
fortune.  The  feverish  excitement  of  the  first  alarm  which 
had  impelled  his  mind  to  travel  into  the  future  had  given  place 
to  a  dull,  regretful  lassitude.  He  cared  so  much  for  the  pleas- 
ures that  could  only  come  to  him  through  the  good  opinion  of 
his  fellow-men,  that  he  wished  now  he  had  never  risked  igno- 
miny by  shrinking  from  what  his  fellow-men  called  obligations. 

But  our  deeds  are  like  children  that  are  born  to  us ;  they 
live  and  act  apart  from  our  own  will,  ^ay,  children  may  be 
strangled,  bu.t  deeds  never :  they  have  an  indestructible  life 
both  in  and  out  of  our  consciousness ;  and  that  dreadful 
vitality  of  deeds  was  pressing  hard  on  Tito  for  the  first  time. 

He  was  going  back  to  his  lodgings  in  the  Piazza  di  San  Gio- 
vanni, but  he  avoided  passing  through  the  Mercato  Veechio, 
which  was  his  nearest  way,  lest  he  should  see  Tessa.  He  was 
not  in  the  humor  to  seek  anything ;  he  could  only  await  the 
first  sign  of  his  altering  lot. 

The  piazza  with  its  sights  of  beauty  was  lit  up  by  that 
warm  morning  sunlight  under  which  the  autumn  dew  still  lin- 
gers, and  which  invites  to  an  idlesse  undulled  by  fatigue.  It 
was  a  festival  morning,  too,  when  the  soft  warmth  seems  to 
steal  over  one  with  a  special  invitation  to  lounge  and  gaze. 
Here,  too,  the  signs  of  the  fair  were  present ;  in  the  spaces 
round  the  octagonal  baptistery,  stalls  were  being  spread  with 
fruit  and  flowers,  and  here  and  there  laden  mules  were  stand- 
ing quietly  absorbed  iu  their  nose-bags,  while  their  drivers 


FACADE    OF   THE    CATHEDRAL    OF    SANTA    MARIA    DEL    FIORE    (THE    DUOMO). 


A  FLORENTINE  JOKE.  151 

were  perhaps  gone  through  the  hospitable  sacred  doors  to 
kneel  before  the  blessed  Virgin  on  this  morning  of  her  Na- 
tivity. On  the  broad  marble  steps  of  the  Duomo  there  were 
scattered  groups  of  beggars  and  gossiping  talkers  :  here  an 
old  crone  with  white  hair  and  hard  sunburnt  face  encouraging 
a  round-capped  baby  to  try  its  tiny  bare  feet  on  the  warmed 
marble,  while  a  dog  sitting  near  snuffed  at  the  performance 
suspiciously  ;  there  a  couple  of  shaggy-headed  boys  leaning  to 
watch  a  small  pale  cripple  who  was  cutting  a  face  on  a  cherry- 
stone ;  and  above  them  on  the  wide  platform  men  were  mak- 
ing changing  knots  in  laughing  desultory  chat,  or  else  were 
standing  in  close  couples  gesticulating  eagerly. 

But  the  largest  and  most  important  company  of  loungers 
was  that  towards  which  Tito  had  to  direct  his  steps.  It  was 
the  busiest  time  of  the  day  with  Nello,  and  in  this  warm  sea- 
son and  at  an  hour  when  clients  were  numerous,  most  men 
preferred  being  shaved  under  the  pretty  red  and  white  awning 
in  front  of  the  shop  rather  than  within  narrow  walls.  It  is 
not  a  sublime  attitude  for  a  man,  to  sit  with  lathered  chin 
thrown  backward,  and  have  his  nose  made  a  handle  of ;  but  to 
be  shaved  was  a  fashion  of  Florentine  respectability,  and  it  is 
astonishing  how  gravely  men  look  at  each  other  when  they  are 
all  in  the  fashion.  It  was  the  hour  of  the  day,  too,  when 
yesterday's  crop  of  gossip  was  freshest,  and  the  barber's 
tongue  was  always  in  its  glory  when  his  razor  was  busy  ;  the 
deft  activity  of  those  two  instruments  seemed  to  be  set  going 
by  a  common  spring.  Tito  foresaw  that  it  would  be  impossi- 
ble for  him  to  escape  being  drawn  into  the  circle  ;  he  must 
smile  and  retort,  and  look  perfectly  at  his  ease.  Well !  it  was 
but  the  ordeal  of  swallowing  bread  and  cheese  pills  after  all. 
The  man  who  let  the  mere  anticipation  of  discovery  choke 
him  was  simply  a  man  of  weak  nerves. 

But  just  at  that  time  Tito  felt  a  hand  laid  on  his  shoulder, 
and  no  amount  of  previous  resolution  could  prevent  the  very 
unpleasant  sensation  with  which  that  sudden  touch  jarred 
him.  His  face,  as  he  turned  it  round,  betrayed  the  inward 
shock  ;  but  the  owner  of  the  hand  that  seemed  to  have  such 
evil  magic  in  it  broke  into  a  light  laugh.  He  was  a  young 
man  about  Tito's  own  age,  with  keen  features,  small  close- 
clipped  head,  and  close-shaven  lip  and  chin,  giving  the  idea  of 
a  mind  as  little  encumbered  as  possible  with  material  that  was 
not  nervous.  The  keen  eyes  were  bright  with  hope  and 
friendliness,  as  so  many  other  young  eyes  have  been  that  have 
afterwards  closed  on  the  world  in  bitterness  and  disappoint- 


152  ROMOLA. 

ment ;  for  at  that  time  there  were  none  but  pleasant  predio. 
tions  about  Niccolo  Macchiavelli,  as  a  young  man  of  promise, 
who  was  expected  to  mend  the  broken  fortunes  of  his  ancient 
family. 

"  Why,  Melema,  what  evil  dream  did  you  have  last  night, 
that  you  took  my  light  grasp  for  that  of  a  sblrro  or  something 
worse  ?  " 

"Ah,  Messer  Niccolo  !"  said  Tito,  recovering  himself  imme- 
diately ;  "  it  must  have  been  an  extra  amount  of  dulness  in 
my  veins  this  morning  that  shuddered  at  the  approach  of  your 
wit.     But  the  fact  is,  I  have  had  a  bad  night." 

"  That  is  unlucky,  because  you  will  be  expected  to  shine 
without  any  obstructing  fog  to-day  in  the  Rucellai  Gardens. 
I  take  it  for  granted  you  are  to  be  there." 

"Messer  Bernardo  did  me  the  honor  to  invite  me,"  said 
Tito ;  "  but  I  shall  be  engaged  elsewhere." 

"  Ah  !  I  remember,  you  are  in  love,"  said  Macchiavelli,  with 
a  shrug,  "  else  you  would  never  have  such  inconvenient  engage- 
ments. Why,  we  are  to  eat  a  peacock  and  ortolans  under  the 
loggia  among  Bernardo  Rucellai's  rare  trees ;  there  are  to  be 
the  choicest  spirits  in  Florence  and  the  choicest  wines.  Only, 
as  Piero  de'  Medici  is  to  be  there,  the  choice  spirits  may  hap- 
pen to  be  swamped  in  the  capping  of  impromptu  verses.  I 
hate  that  game;  it  is  a  device  for  the  triumph  of  small  wits, 
who  are  always  inspired  the  most  b^^  the  smallest  occasions." 

"  What  is  that  you  are  saying  about  Piero  de'  Medici  and 
small  wits,  Messer  Niccolo  ?  "  said  Nello,  whose  light  figure  was 
at  that  moment  predominating  over  the  Herculean  frame  of 
Niccolo  Caparra. 

That  famous  worker  in  iron,  whom  we  saw  last  with  bared 
muscular  arms  and  leathern  apron  in  the  IMercato  Vecchio, 
was  this  morning  dressed  in  holiday  suit,  and  as  he  sat  sub- 
missively while  Nello  skipped  round  him,  lathered  him,  seized 
him  by  the  nose,  and  scraped  hiau  with  magical  quickness,  he 
looked  much  as  a  lion  might  if  it  had  donned  linen  and  tunic 
and  was  preparing  to  go  into  society. 

"A  private  secretary  will  never  rise  in  the  world  if  he 
couples  great  and  small  in  that  way,"  continued  Nello. 
"  When  great  men  are  not  allowed  to  marry  their  sons  and 
daughters  as  they  like,  small  men  must  not  expect  to  marry 
their  words  as  they  like.  Have  you  heard  the  news  Domenico 
Cennini,  here,  has  been  telling  us  ?  —  that  Pagolantonio 
Soderini  has  given  Ser  Piero  da  Bibbiena  a  box  on  the  ear  for 
setting  on  Piero  de'  Medici  to  interfere  with  the  marriage  bes- 


A   FLORENTINE  JOKE.  153 

tween  young  Tommaso  Soderini  and  Fiammetta  Strozzi,  and  is 
to  be  sent  ambassador  to  Venice  as  a  punishment  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  which  I  envy  him  most,"  said  Macchiavelli, 
"the  offence  or  the  punishment.  The  offence  will  make  him 
the  most  popular  man  in  all  Florence,  and  the  punishment 
will  take  him  among  the  only  people  in  Italy  who  have  known 
how  to  manage  their  own  affairs.'" 

"  Yes,  if  Soderini  stays  long  enough  at  Venice,"  said  Cen- 
nini,  "  he  may  chance  to  learn  the  Venetian  fashion,  and  bring 
it  home  with  him.  The  Soderini  have  been  fast  friends  of 
the  Medici,  but  what  has  happened  is  likely  to  open  Pagolan- 
tonio's  eyes  to  the  good  of  our  old  Florentine  trick  of  choosing 
a  new  harness  when  the  old  one  galls  us ;  if  we  have  not  quite 
lost  the  trick  in  these  last  fifty  years." 

"Not  we,"  said  Niccolo  Caparra,  who  was  rejoicing  in  the 
free  use  of  his  lips  again.  "Eat  eggs  in  Lent  and  the  snow 
will  melt.  That's  what  I  say  to  our  people  Avhen  they  get 
noisy  over  their  cups  at  San  Gallo,  and  talk  of  raising  a  romor 
(insurrection):  I  say, never  do  you  plan  a  romor ;  you  may  as 
well  try  to  fill  Arno  with  buckets.  When  there's  water 
enough  Arno  will  be  full,  and  that  will  not  be  till  the  torrent 
is  ready." 

"  Caparra,  that  oracular  speech  of  yours  is  due  to  my  excel- 
lent shaving,"  said  Xello.  "  You  could  never  have  made  it 
with  that  dark  rust  on  your  chin.  Ecco,  Messer  Domenico,  I 
am  ready  for  you  now.  By  the  way,  my  bel  erudito,"  con- 
tinued Nello,  as  he  saw  Tito  moving  towards  the  door,  "here 
has  been  old  Maso  seeking  for  you,  but  your  nest  was  empty. 
He  will  come  again  presently.  The  old  man  looked  mournful, 
and  seemed  in  haste.  I  hope  there  is  nothing  wrong  in  the 
Via  de'  Bardi." 

"  Doubtless  Messer  Tito  knows  that  Bardo's  son  is  dead," 
said  Cronaca,  who  had  just  come  up. 

Tito's  heart  gave  a  leap  —  had  the  death  happened  before 
Romola  saw  him  ? 

"No,  I  had  not  heard  it,"  he  said,  with  no  more  discompos- 
ure than  the  occasion  seemed  to  warrant,  turning  and  leaning 
against  the  doorpost,  as  if  he  had  given  up  his  intention  of 
going  away.  "  I  knew  that  his  sister  had  gone  to  see  him. 
Did  he  die  before  she  arrived  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Cronaca ;  "  I  was  in  San  Marco  at  the  time,  and 
saw  her  come  out  from  the  chapter-house  with  Fra  Girolamo, 
who  told  us  that  the  dying  man's  breath  had  been  preserved 
as  by  a  miracle,  that  he  might  make  a  disclosure  to  his  sistei.'" 


154  ROM  OLA. 

Tito  felt  that  his  fate  was  decided.  Again  his  mind  rushed 
over  all  the  circumstances  of  his  departure  from  Florence,  and 
he  conceived  a  plan  of  getting  back  his  money  from  Cennini 
before  the  disclosure  had  become  public.  If  he  once  had  his 
money  he  need  not  stay  long  in  endurance  of  scorching  looks 
and  biting  words.  He  would  wait  now,  and  go  away  with 
Cennini  and  get  the  money  from  him  at  once.  With  that 
project  in  his  mind  he  stood  motionless  —  his  hands  in  his  belt, 
his  eyes  fixed  absently  on  the  ground.  Nello,  glancing  at  him, 
felt  sure  that  he  was  absorbed  in  anxiety  about  Romola,  and 
thought  him  such  a  pretty  image  of  self-forgetful  sadness,  that 
he  just  perceptibly  pointed  his  razor  at  him,  and  gave  a  chal- 
lenging look  at  Piero  di  Cosimo,  whom  he  had  never  forgiven 
for  his  refusal  to  see  any  prognostics  of  character  in  his  favor- 
ite's handsome  face.  Piero,  who  was  leaning  against  the  other 
doorpost,  close  to  Tito,  shrugged  his  shoulders :  the  frequent 
recurrence  of  such  challenges  from  Nello  had  changed  the 
painter's  first  declaration  of  neutrality  into  a  positive  inclina- 
tion to  believe  ill  of  the  much-praised  Gi'eek. 

"  So  you  have  got  your  Fra  Girolamo  back  again,  Cronaca  ? 
I  suppose  we  shall  have  him  preaching  again  this  next  Advent," 
said  Nello. 

"And  not  before  there  is  need,"  said  Cronaca,  gravely. 
"We  have  had  the  best  testimony  to  his  words  since  the  last 
Quaresima;  for  even  to  the  wicked  wickedness  has  become  a 
plague ;  and  the  ripeness  of  vice  is  turning  to  rottenness  in 
the  nostrils  even  of  the  vicious.  There  has  not  been  a  change 
since  the  Quaresima,  either  in  Rome  or  at  Florence,  but  has  put 
a  new  seal  on  the  Frate's  words  —  that  the  harvest  of  sin  is 
ripe,  and  that  God  will  reap  it  with  a  sword." 

"I  hope  he  has  had  a  new  vision,  however,"  said  Francesco 
Cei,  sneeringly.  "The  old  ones  are  somewhat  stale.  Can't 
your  Frate  get  a  poet  to  help  out  his  imagination  for  him  ?  " 

"  He  has  no  lack  of  poets  about  him,"  said  Cronaca,  with 
quiet  contempt,  "  but  they  are  great  poets  and  not  little  ones ; 
so  they  are  contented  to  be  taught  by  him,  and  no  more  think 
the  truth  stale  which  God  has  given  him  to  utter,  than  they 
think  the  light  of  the  moon  is  stale.  But  perhaps  certain 
high  prelates  and  princes  who  dislike  the  Frate's  denunciations 
might  be  pleased  to  hear  that,  though  Giovanni  Pico,  and 
Poliziano,  and  Marsilio  Ficino,  and  most  other  men  of  mark  in 
Florence,  reverence  Fra  Girolamo,  Messer  Francesco  Cei  de- 
spises him." 

"Poliziano?"    said   Cei,    with   a    scornful    laugh.     "Yes, 


A   FLORENTINE  JOKE,  155 

doubtless  he  believes  in  your  new  Jonah ,  witness  the 
fine  orations  he  wrote  for  the  envoys  of  Sienna,  to  tell 
Alexander  the  Sixth  that  the  world  and  the  Church  were 
never  so  well  off  as  since  he  became  Pope." 

"Nay,  Francesco,"  said  Macchiavelli,  smiling,  '^a  various 
scholar  must  have  various  opinions.  And  as  for  the  Frate, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  his  saintliness,  you  judge  his 
preaching  too  narrowly.  The  secret  of  oratory  lies,  not  in 
saying  new  things,  but  in  saying  things  with  a  certain  power 
that  moves  the  hearers  —  without  which,  as  old  Filelfo  has 
said,  your  speaker  deserves  to  be  called,  '  non  oratorem,  sed 
aratorem.'  ^Vnd,  according  to  that  test,  Fra  Girolamo  is  a 
great  orator." 

"That  is  true,  Niccolo,"  said  Cennini,  speaking  from  the 
shaving-chair,  "  but  part  of  the  secret  lies  in  the  prophetic 
visions.  Our  people  —  no  offence  to  you,  Cronaca  —  will  run 
after  anything  in  the  shape  of  a  prophet,  especially  if  he 
prophesies  terrors  and  tribulations." 

"  Rather  say,  Cennini,"  answered  Cronaca,  "that  the  chief 
secret  lies  in  the  Frate's  pure  life  and  strong  faith,  which 
stamp  him  as  a  messenger  of  God." 

"I  admit  it  —  I  admit  it,"  said  Cennini,  opening  his  palms, 
as  he  rose  from  the  chair.  "  His  life  is  spotless :  no  man  has 
impeached  it." 

"  He  is  satisfied  with  the  pleasant  lust  of  arrogance,"  Cei 
burst  out  bitterly.  "  I  can  see  it  in  that  proud  lip  and  satis- 
fied eye  of  his.  He  hears  the  air  filled  with  his  own  name  — 
Fra  Girolamo  Savonarola,  of  Ferrara ;  the  prophet,  the  saint, 
the  mighty  preacher,  who  frightens  the  very  babies  of  Flor- 
ence into  laying  down  their  wicked  bawbles." 

"Come,  come,  Francesco,  you  are  out  of  humor  with  wait- 
ing," said  the  conciliatory  Nello.  "Let  me  stop  your  mouth 
with  a  little  lather.  I  must  not  have  my  friend  Cronaca 
made  angry  :  I  have  a  regard  for  his  chin  ;  and  his  chin  is  in 
no  respect  altered  since  he  became  a  Piagnone.  And  for  my 
own  part,  I  confess,  when  the  Frate  was  preaching  in  the 
Duomo  last  Advent,  I  got  into  such  a  trick  of  slipping 
in  to  listen  to  him  that  I  might  have  turned  Piagnone 
too,  if  I  had  not  been  hindered  by  the  liberal  nature  of  my 
art ;  and  also  by  the  length  of  the  sermons,  which  are  some- 
times a  good  while  before  they  get  to  the  moving  point.  But, 
as  Messer  Niccolo  here  says,  the  Frate  lays  liold  of  the 
people  by  some  power  over  and  above  his  prophetic  visions. 
Monks  and  nuns  who  prophesy  are  not  of  that  rareness.     For 


166  ROMOLA. 

what  says  Luigi  Pulci  ?  'Donibruno's  sharp-cutting  cimiter 
had  the  fame  of  being  enchanted;  but,'  says  Luigi,  '  I  am  rather 
of  opinion  that  it  cut  sharp  because  it  was  of  strongly  tem- 
pered steel.'  Yes,  yes  ;  Paternosters  may  shave  clean,  but 
they  must  be  said  over  a  good  razor." 

*'  See,  Nello  !  "  said  Macchiavelli,  "  what  doctor  is  this  ad- 
vancing on  his  Bucephalus  ?  I  thought  yoiu'  piazza  was  free 
from  those  furred  and  scarlet-robed  lackeys  of  death.  This 
man  looks  as  if  he  had  had  some  such  night  adventure  as 
Boccaccio's  Maestro  Simone,  and  had  his  bonnet  and  mantle 
pictled  a  little  in  the  gutter ;  though  he  himself  is  as  sleek 
as  a  miller's  rat." 

"  A-ah  !  "  said  Nello,  with  a  low  long-drawn  intonation,  as 
he  looked  up  towards  the  advancing  figure  —  a  round-headed, 
round-bodied  personage,  seated  on  a  raw  young  horse,  which 
held  its  nose  out  with  an  air  of  threatening  obstinacy,  and  by 
a  constant  effort  to  back  and  go  off  in  an  oblique  line  showed 
free  views  about  authority  very  much  in  advance  of  the  age. 

"And  I  have  a  few  more  adventures  in  pickle  for  him," 
continued  Nello,  in  an  undertone,  "  which  I  hope  will  drive  his 
inquiring  nostrils  to  another  quarter  of  the  city.  He's  a  doctor 
from  Padua ;  they  say  he  has  been  at  Prato  for  three  months, 
and  now  he's  come  to  Florence  to  see  what  he  can  net.  But 
his  great  trick  is  making  rounds  among  the  contadini.  And 
do  you  note  those  great  saddle-bags  he  carries  ?  They  are  to 
hold  the  fat  capons  and  eggs  and  meal  he  levies  on  silly 
clowns  with  whom  coin  is  scarce.  He  vends  his  own  secret 
medicines,  so  he  keeps  away  from  the  doors  of  the  druggists ; 
and  for  this  last  week  he  has  taken  to  sitting  in  my  piazza 
for  two  or  three  hours  every  day,  and  making  it  a  resort  for 
asthmas  and  squalling  bambini.  It  stirs  my  gall  to  see  the 
toad-faced  quack  fingering  the  greasy  quattrini,  or  bagging  a 
pigeon  in  exchange  for  his  pills  and  powders.  But  I'll  put  a 
few  thorns  in  his  saddle,  else  I'm  no  Florentine.  Laudamus  I 
he  is  coming  to  be  shaved;  that's  what  I've  waited  for. 
Messer  Domenico,  go  not  away :  wait ;  you  shall  see  a  rare 
bit  of  fooling,  which  I  devised  two  days  ago.  Here, 
Sandro ! " 

Nello  whispered  in  the  ear  of  Sandro,  who  rolled  his  sol- 
emn eyes,  nodded,  and,  following  up  these  signs  of  under- 
standing with  a  slow  smile,  took  to  his  heels  with  surprising 
rapidity. 

"  How  is  it  with  you,  Maestro  Tacco  ?"  said  Nello,  as  the 
doctor,  with  difficulty,  brought  his  horse's  head  round  towards 


A  FLORENTINE  JOKE.  157 

the  barber's  shop.  "  That  is  a  fine  young  horse  of  yours,  but 
something  raw  in  the  mouth,  eh  ?  " 

"  He  is  an  accursed  beast,  the  vermocane  seize  him  ! "  said 
Maestro  Tacco,  with  a  burst  of  irritation,  descending  from  his 
saddle  and  fastening  the  old  bridle,  mended  with  string,  to  an 
iron  staple  in  the  wall.  "  Nevertheless,"  he  added,  recollect- 
ing himself,  "  a  sound  beast  and  a  valuable,  for  one  who  wanted 
to  purchase,  and  get  a  profit  by  training  him.  I  had  him 
cheap." 

"  Eather  too  hard  riding  for  a  man  who  carries  your  weight 
of  learning :  eh.  Maestro  ?  "  said  Nello.     "  You  seem  hot." 

"  Trul}",  I  am  likely  to  be  hot,"  said  the  doctor,  taking  off 
his  bonnet,  and  giving  to  full  view  a  bald  low  head  and  flat 
broad  face,  with  high  ears,  wide  lipless  mouth,  round  eyes, 
and  deep  arched  lines  above  the  projecting  eyebrows,  which 
altogether  made  Nello's  epithet  "  toad-faced  "  dubiously  com- 
plimentary to  the  blameless  batrachian.  "  Riding  from  Pere- 
tola,  when  the  sun  is  high,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  kicking 
your  heels  on  a  bench  in  the  shade,  like  your  Florence  doctors. 
Moreover,  I  have  had  not  a  little  pulling  to  get  through  the 
carts  and  mules  into  the  Mercato,  to  find  out  the  husband  of  a 
certain  Monna  Ghita,  who  had  had  a  fatal  seizure  before  I  was 
called  in ;  and  if  it  had  not  been  that  I  had  to  demand  my 
fees  "  — 

"  Monna  Ghita  ! "  said  Nello,  as  the  perspiring  doctor  inter- 
rupted himself  to  rub  his  head  and  face.  "  Peace  be  with  her 
angry  soul !  The  Mercato  will  want  a  whip  the  more  if  her 
tongue  is  laid  to  rest." 

Tito,  who  had  roused  himself  from  his  abstraction,  and  was 
listening  to  the  dialogue,  felt  a  new  rush  of  the  vague  half- 
formed  ideas  about  Tessa,  which  had  passed  through  his  mind 
the  evening  before  :  if  Monna  Ghita  were  really  taken  out  of 
the  way,  it  would  be  easier  for  him  to  see  Tessa  again  — 
whenever  he  wanted  to  see  her. 

"  Gnaffe,  Maestro,"  Nello  went  on,  in  a  sympathizing  tone, 
"  you  are  the  slave  of  rude  mortals,  who,  but  for  you,  would 
die  like  brutes,  without  help  of  pill  or  powder.  It  is  pitiful 
to  see  your  learned  lymph  oozing  from  your  pores  as  if  it  were 
mere  vulgar  moisture.  You  think  my  shaving  will  cool  and 
disencumber  you  ?  One  moment  and  I  have  done  with  Messer 
Francesco  here.  It  seems  to  me  a  thousand  years  till  I  wait 
upon  a  man  who  carries  all  the  science  of  Arabia  in  his  head 
and  saddle-bags.     Ecco ! " 

Nello  held  up  the  shaving-cloth  with  an  air  of  invitation, 


158  ROMOLA. 

and  Maestro  Tacco  advanced  and  seated  himself  under  a  pre- 
occupation  with  his  heat  and  his  self-importance,  which  made 
him  quite  deaf  to  the  irony  conveyed  in  Nello's  officiously 
polite  speech. 

"  It  is  but  fitting  that  a  great  medicus  like  you,"  said  Nello, 
adjusting  the  cloth,  "  should  be  shaved  by  the  same  razor  that 
has  shaved  the  illustrious  Antonio  Benevieni,  the  greatest 
master  of  the  chirurgic  art." 

"  The  chirurgic  art  I "  interrupted  the  doctor,  with  an  air  of 
contemptuous  disgust.  "  Is  it  your  Florentine  fashion  to  put 
the  masters  of  the  science  of  medicine  on  a  level  with  men 
who  do  carpentery  on  broken  limbs,  and  sew  up  wounds  like 
tailors,  and  carve  away  excrescences  as  a  butcher  trims  meat  ? 
Via  !  A  manual  art,  such  as  any  artificer  might  learn,  and 
which  has  been  practised  by  simple  barbers  like  yourself  —  on 
a  level  with  the  noble  science  of  Hippocrates,  Galen,  and 
Avicenna,  which  penetrates  into  the  occult  influences  of  the 
stars  and  plants  and  gems !  —  a  science  locked  up  from  the 
vulgar ! " 

"  No,  in  truth.  Maestro,"  said  Nello,  using  his  lather  very 
deliberately,  as  if  he  wanted  to  prolong  the  operation  to  the 
utmost,  "  I  never  thought  of  placing  them  on  a  level :  I  know 
your  science  comes  next  to  the  miracles  of  Holy  Church  for 
mystery.  But  there,  you  see,  is  the  pity  of  it "  —  here  Nello 
fell  into  a  tone  of  regretful  sympathy —  "your  high  science  is 
sealed  from  the  profane  and  the  vulgai',  and  so  you  become  an 
object  of  envy  and  slander.  I  grieve  to  say  it,  but  there  are 
low  fellows  in  this  city  —  mere  sgherri,  who  go  about  in  night- 
caps and  long  beards,  and  make  it  their  business  to  sprinkle 
gall  in  every  man's  broth  who  is  prospering.  Let  me  tell  you 
—  for  you  are  a  stranger  —  this  is  a  city  where  every  man  had 
need  carry  a  large  nail  ready  to  fasten  on  the  wheel  of  Fort- 
une when  his  side  happens  to  be  uppermost.  Already  there 
are  stories  —  mere  fables  doubtless  —  beginning  to  be  buzzed 
about  concerning  you,  that  make  me  wish  I  could  hear  of  your 
being  well  on  your  way  to  Arezzo.  I  would  not  have  a  man 
of  your  metal  stoned,  for  though  San  Stefano  was  stoned,  he 
was  not  great  in  medicine  like  San  Cosmo  and  San  Dami- 
ano.  .  .  ." 

"  What  stories  ?  what  fables  ?  "  stammered  Maestro  Tacco. 
''  What  do  you  mean  ?  " 

^^ Lasso!  I  fear  me  you  are  come  into  the  trap  for  your 
cheese.  Maestro.  The  fact  is,  there  is  a  company  of  evil 
youths  who  go   prowling   about   the   houses  of   our  citizens 


A   FLORENTINE  JOKE.  159 

carrying  sharp  tools  in  their  pockets;  —  no  sort  of  door,  or 
window,  or  shutter,  but  they  will  pierce  it.  They  are  pos- 
sessed with  a  diabolical  patience  to  watch  the  doings  of 
people  who  fancy  themselves  private.  It  must  be  they  who 
have  done  it  —  it  must  be  they  who  have  spread  the  stories 
about  you  and  your  medicines.  Have  you  by  chance  detected 
any  small  aperture  in  your  door,  or  window-shutter  ?  No  ? 
Well,  I  advise  you  to  look ;  for  it  is  now  commonly  talked  of 
that  you  have  been  seen  in  your  dwelling  at  the  Canto  di 
Paglia,  making  your  secret  specifics  by  night :  pounding  dried 
toads  in  a  mortar,  compounding  a  salve  out  of  mashed  worms, 
and  making  your  pills  from  the  dried  livers  of  rats  which  you 
mix  with  saliva  emitted  during  the  utterance  of  a  blasphe- 
mous incantation  —  which  indeed  these  witnesses  profess  to 
repeat." 

"  It  is  a  pack  of  lies  !  "  exclaimed  the  doctor,  struggling  to 
get  utterance,  and  then  desisting  in  alarm  at  the  approaching 
razor. 

"  It  is  not  to  me,  or  any  of  this  respectable  company,  that 
you  need  to  say  that,  doctor.  We  are  not  the  heads  to  plant 
such  carrots  as  those  in.  But  what  of  that  ?  What  are  a 
handful  of  reasonable  men  against  a  crowd  with  stones  in 
their  hands  ?  There  are  those  among  us  who  think  Cecco 
d'Ascoli  was  an  innocent  sage  —  and  we  all  know  how  he  was 
burnt  alive  for  being  wiser  than  his  fellows.  Ah,  doctor,  it  is 
not  by  living  at  Padua  that  you  can  learn  to  know  Florentines. 
My  belief  is,  they  would  stone  the  Holy  Father  himself,  if 
they  could  find  a  good  excuse  for  it ;  and  they  are  persuaded 
that  you  are  a  necromancer,  who  is  trying  to  raise  the  pesti- 
lence by  selling  secret  medicines  —  and  I  am  told  your 
specifics  have  in  truth  an  evil  smell." 

"It  is  false  !  "  burst  out  the  doctor,  as  Nello  moved  away 
his  razor  ;  "  it  is  false  !  I  will  show  the  pills  and  the  powders 
to  these  honorable  signori  —  and  the  salve  —  it  has  an 
excellent  odor  —  an  odor  of  —  of  salve."  He  started  up  with 
the  lather  on  his  chin,  and  the  cloth  round  his  neck,  to  search 
in  his  saddle-bag  for  the  belied  medicines,  and  Nello  in  an 
instant  adroitly  shifted  the  shaving-chair  till  it  was  in  the 
close  vicinity  of  the  horse's  head,  while  Sandro,  who  had  now 
returned,  at  a  sign  from  his  master  placed  himself  near  the 
bridle. 

"  Behold,  Messeri ! "  said  the  doctor,  bringing  a  small  box 
of  medicines  and  opening  it  before  them.  "Let  any  signor 
apply  this  box  to  his  nostrils,  and  he  will  find  an  honest  odor 


160  nOMOLA. 

of  medicaments  —  not  indeed  of  pounded  gems,  or  rare 
vegetables  from  the  East,  or  stones  found  in  the  bodies  of 
birds  ;  for  I  practise  on  the  diseases  of  the  vulgar,  for  whom 
Heaven  has  provided  cheaper  and  less  powerful  remedies 
according  to  their  degree  :  and  there  are  even  remedies  known 
to  our  science  which  are  entirely  free  of  cost  —  as  the  new 
tussis  may  be  counteracted  in  the  poor,  who  can  pay  for  no 
specifics,  by  a  resolute  holding  of  the  breath.  And  here  is  a 
paste  which  is  even  of  savory  odor,  and  is  infallible  against 
melancholia,  being  concocted  under  the  conjunction  of  Jupiter 
and  Venus ;  and  I  have  seen  it  allay  spasms." 

"  Stay,  Maestro,"  said  Nello,  while  the  doctor  had  his 
lathered  face  turned  towards  the  group  near  the  door,  eagerly 
holding  out  his  box,  and  lifting  out  one  specific  after  another ; 
"  here  comes  a  crying  contadina  with  her  baby.  Doubtless 
she  is  in  search  of  you  ;  it  is  perhaps  an  opportunity  for  you 
to  show  this  honorable  company  a  proof  of  your  skill.  Here, 
buona  donna  !  here  is  the  famous  doctor.  Why,  what  is  the 
matter  with  the  sweet  bimbo  ?  " 

This  question  was  addressed  to  a  sturdy-looking,  broad- 
shouldered  contadina  with  her  head-drapery  folded  about  her 
face  so  that  little  was  to  be  seen  but  a  bronzed  nose  and  a 
pair  of  dark  eyes  and  eyebrows.  She  carried  her  child  packed 
up  in  the  stiff  mummy-shaped  case  in  which  Italian  babies 
have  been  from  time  immemorial  introduced  into  society, 
turning  its  face  a  little  towards  her  bosom,  and  making  those 
sorrowful  grimaces  which  women  are  in  the  habit  of  using  as 
a  sort  of  pulleys  to  draw  down  reluctant  tears. 

"  Oh,  for  the  love  of  the  Holy  Madonna ! "  said  the  woman, 
in  a  wailing  voice  ;  ''  will  you  look  at  my  poor  bimbo  ?  I 
know  I  can't  pay  you  for  it,  but  I  took  it  into  the  ISTunziata 
last  night,  and  it's  turned  a  worse  color  than  before ;  it's  the 
convulsions.  But  when  I  was  holding  it  before  the  Santissima 
Nunziata,  I  remembered  they  said  there  was  a  new  doctor 
come  who  cured  everything  ;  and  so  I  thought  it  might  be  the 
will  of  the  Holy  Madonna  that  I  should  bring  it  to  you." 

"  Sit  down,  Maestro,  sit  down,"  said  Nello.  "  Here  is  an 
opportunity  for  you ;  here  are  honorable  witnesses  who  will 
declare  before  the  Magnificent  Eight  that  they  have  seen  you 
practising  honestly  and  relieving  a  })Oor  woman's  child.  And 
then  if  your  life  is  in  danger,  the  Magnificent  Eight  will  put 
you  in  prison  a  little  while  just  to  insure  your  safety,  and  after 
that,  their  sbirri  will  conduct  you  out  of  Florence  by  night,  as 
they  did  the  zealous  Frate  Minore  wlio  preached  against  the 


A  FLORENTINE  JOKE.  161 

Jews.     What !    our  people  are  given  to  stone-throwing ;  but 
we  have  magistrates." 

The  doctor,  unable  to  refuse,  seated  himself  in  the  shaving- 
chair,  trembling,  half  with  fear  and  half  with  rage,  and  by 
this  time  quite  unconscious  of  the  lather  which  Nello  had  laid 
on  with  such  profuseness.  He  deposited  his  medicine-case 
on  his  knees,  took  out  his  precious  spectacles  (wondrous 
Florentine  device !)  from  his  wallet,  lodged  them  carefully 
above  his  flat  nose  and  high  ears,  and  lifting  up  his  brows, 
turned  towards  the  applicant. 

"  0  Santiddio  !  look  at  him,"  said  the  woman  with  a  more 
piteous  wail  than  ever,  as  she  held  out  the  small  mummy, 
which  had  its  head  completely  concealed  by  dingy  drapery 
wound  round  the  head  of  the  portable  cradle,  but  seemed  to 
be  struggling  and  crying  in  a  demoniacal  fashion  under  this 
imprisonment.  "  The  fit  is  on  him  !  Ohime  f  I  know  what 
color  he  is  ;  it's  the  evil  eye  —  oh  !  " 

The  doctor,  anxiously  holding  his  knees  together  to  support 
his  box,  bent  his  spectacles  towards  the  baby,  and  said 
cautiously,  "  It  may  be  a  new  disease  ;  unwind  these  rags, 
Monna  !  " 

The  contadina,  with  sudden  energy,  snatched  off  the 
encircling  linen,  when  out  struggled  —  scratching,  grinning, 
and  screaming  —  what  the  doctor  in  his  fright  fully  believed 
to  be  a  demon,  but  what  Tito  recognized  as  Vaiauo's  monkey, 
made  more  formidable  by  an  artificial  blackness,  such  as  might 
have  come  from  a  hasty  rubbing  up  the  chimney. 

Up  started  the  unfortunate  doctor,  letting  his  medicine-box 
fall,  and  away  jumped  the  no  less  terrified  and  indignant 
monkey,  finding  the  first  resting-place  for  his  claws  on  the 
horse's  mane,  which  he  used  as  a  sort  of  rope-ladder  till  he 
had  fairly  found  his  equilibrium,  when  he  continued  to  clutch 
it  as  a  bridle.  The  horse  wanted  no  spur  under  such  a  rider, 
and,  the  already  loosened  bridle  offering  no  resistance,  darted 
off  across  the  piazza,  with  the  monkey,  clutching,  grinning, 
and  blinking,  on  his  neck. 

"  11  cavallo  !  II  Diavolo  !  "  was  now  shouted  on  all  sides  by 
the  idle  rascals  who  gathered  from  all  quarters  of  the  piazza, 
and  was  echoed  in  tones  of  alarm  by  the  stall-keepers,  whose 
vested  interests  seemed  in  some  danger ;  while  the  doctor 
out  of  his  wits  with  confused  terror  at  the  Devil,  the  possible 
stoning,  and  the  escape  of  his  horse,  took  to  his  heels  with 
spectacles  on  nose,  lathered  face,  and  the  shaving-cloth  about 
his  neck,  crying  —  "Stop  him!  stop  him!  for  a  powder — a 


162  ROMOLA. 

florin  —  stop  him  for  a  florin  !  "  while  the  lads,  outstripping 
him,  clapped  their  hands  and  shouted  encouragement  to  the 
runaway. 

The  cerretano,  who  had  not  bargained  for  the  flight  of  his 
monkey  along  with  the  horse,  had  caught  up  his  petticoats 
with  much  celerity,  and  showed  a  pair  of  party-colored  hose 
above  his  contadina's  shoes,  far  in  advance  of  the  doctor. 
And  away  went  the  grotesque  race  up  the  Corso  degli  Adimari 
—  the  horse  with  the  singular  jockey,  the  contadina  with  the 
remarkable  hose,  and  the  doctor  in  lather  and  spectacles,  with 
furred  mantle  outfl3ung. 

It  was  a  scene  such  as  Florentines  loved,  from  the  potent 
and  reverend  signor  going  to  council  in  his  lucco,  down  to  the 
grinning  youngster  who  felt  himself  master  of  all  situations 
when  his  bag  was  filled  with  smooth  stones  from  the  conven- 
ient dry  bed  of  the  torrent.  The  gray-headed  Domenico 
Cennini  laughed  no  less  heartily  than  the  younger  men,  and 
Nello  was  triumphantly  secure  of  the  general  admiration. 

"  Aha  !  "  he  exclaimed,  snapping  his  fingers  when  the  first 
burst  of  laughter  was  subsiding.  "  I  have  cleared  my  piazza 
of  that  unsavory  fly-trap,  mi  lyare.  Maestro  Tacco  will  no 
more  come  here  again  to  sit  for  patients  than  he  will  take  to 
licking  marble  for  his  dinner." 

"  You  are  going  towards  the  Piazza  della  Signoria,  Messer 
Domenico,"  said  Macchiavelli.  "  I  will  go  with  you,  and  we 
shall  perhaps  see  who  has  deserved  the  polio  among  these 
racers.     Come,  Melema,  will  you  go  too  ?  " 

It  had  been  precisely  Tito's  intention  to  accompany  Cennini, 
but  before  he  had  gone  many  steps,  he  was  called  back  by 
Nello,  who  saw  Maso  approaching. 

Maso's  message  was  from  Romola.  She  wished  Tito  to  go 
to  the  Via  de'  Bardi  as  soon  as  possible.  She  would  see  him 
under  the  loggia,  at  the  top  of  the  house,  as  she  wished  to 
speak  to  him  alone. 


UNDER   THE  LOGGIA.  163 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

UNDER    THE    LOGGIA. 

The  loggia  at  the  top  of  Bardo's  house  rose  above  the 
buildings  on  each  side  of  it,  and  formed  a  gallery  round 
quadrangular  walls.  On  the  side  towards  the  street  the  roof 
was  supported  by  columns  ;  but  on  the  remaining  sides,  by  a 
wall  pierced  with  arched  openings,  so  that  at  the  back,  looking 
over  a  crowd  of  irregular,  poorly  built  dwellings  towards  the 
hill  of  Bogoli,  Romola  could  at  all  times  have  a  walk  sheltered 
from  observation.  Near  one  of  those  arched  openings,  close  to 
the  door  by  which  he  had  entered  the  loggia,  Tito  awaited  her, 
with  a  sickening  sense  of  the  sunlight  that  slanted  before 
him  and  mingled  itself  with  the  ruin  of  his  hopes.  He  had 
never  for  a  moment  relied  on  Romola's  passion  for  him  as 
likely  to  be  too  strong  for  the  repulsion  created  by  the  dis- 
covery of  his  secret ;  he  had  not  the  presumptuous  vanity 
which  might  have  hindered  him  from  feeling  that  her  love  had 
the  same  root  with  her  belief  in  him.  But  as  he  imagined  her 
coming  towards  him  in  her  radiant  beauty,  made  so  lovably 
mortal  by  her  soft  hazel  eyes,  he  fell  into  wishing  that  she  had 
been  something  lower,  if  it  were  only  that  she  might  let  him 
clasp  her  and  kiss  her  before  they  parted.  He  had  had  no  real 
caress  from  her  —  nothing  but  now  and  then  a  long  glance,  a 
kiss,  a  pressure  of  the  hand ;  and  he  had  so  often  longed  that 
they  should  be  alone  together.  They  were  going  to  be  alone 
now;  but  he  saw  her  standing  inexorably  aloof  from  him. 
His  heart  gave  a  great  throb  as  he  saw  the  door  move : 
Romola  was  there.  It  was  all  like  a  flash  of  lightning  :  he 
felt,  rather  than  saw,  the  glory  about  her  head,  the  tearful 
appealing  eyes ;  he  felt,  rather  than  heard,  the  cry  of  love 
with  which  she  said,  "  Tito  ! " 

And  in  the  same  moment  she  was  in  his  arms,  and  sobbing 
with  her  face  against  his. 

How  poor  Romola  had  yearned  through  the  watches  of  the 
night  to  see  that  bright  face  !  The  new  image  of  death  ;  the 
strange  bewildering  doubt  infused  into  her  by  the  story  of  a 
life   removed   from    her  understanding  and    sympathy  ;    the 


164  ROMOLA. 

haunting  vision,  which  she  seemed  not  only  to  hear  uttered  by 
the  low  gasping  voice,  but  to  live  through,  as  if  it  had  been 
her  own  dream,  had  made  her  more  conscious  than  ever  that  it 
was  Tito  who  had  first  brought  the  warm  stream  of  hope  and 
gladness  into  her  life,  and  who  had  first  turned  away  the  keen 
edge  of  pain  in  the  remembrance  of  her  brother.  She  would  tell 
Tito  everything ;  there  was  no  one  else  to  whom  she  could 
tell  it.  She  had  been  restraining  herself  in  the  presence  of 
her  father  all  the  morning;  but  now,  that  long-pent-up  sob 
might  come  forth.  Proud  and  self-controlled  to  all  the  world 
beside,  Romola  was  as  simple  and  unreserved  as  a  child  in  her 
love  for  Tito.  She  had  been  quite  contented  with  the  days 
when  they  had  only  looked  at  each  other ;  but  now,  when  she 
felt  the  need  of  clinging  to  him,  there  was  no  thought  that 
hindered  her. 

"  My  Romola !  my  goddess  ! "  Tito  murmured  with  passion- 
ate fondness,  as  he  clasped  her  gently,  and  kissed  the  thick 
golden  ripples  on  her  neck.  He  was  in  paradise  :  disgrace, 
shame,  parting  —  there  was  no  fear  of  them  any  longer.  This 
happiness  was  too  strong  to  be  marred  by  the  sense  that 
Romola  was  deceived  in  him ;  nay,  he  could  only  rejoice  in 
her  delusion  ;  for,  after  all,  concealment  had  been  wisdom. 
The  only  thing  he  could  regret  was  his  needless  dread;  if, 
indeed,  the  dread  had  not  been  worth  suffering  for  the  sake  of 
this  sudden  rapture. 

The  sob  had  satisfied  itself,  and  Romola  raised  her  head. 
Neither  of  them  spoke ;  they  stood  looking  at  each  other's 
faces  with  that  sweet  wonder  which  belongs  to  young  love  — 
she  with  her  long  white  hands  on  the  dark  brown  curls,  and  he 
with  his  dark  fingers  bathed  in  the  streaming  gold.  Each  was 
so  beautiful  to  the  other ;  each  was  experiencing  that  undis- 
turbed mutual  consciousness  for  the  first  time.  The  cold 
pressure  of  a  new  sadness  on  Romola's  heart  made  her  linger 
the  more  in  that  silent  soothing  sense  of  nearness  and  love; 
and  Tito  could  not  even  seek  to  press  his  lips  to  hers,  because 
that  would  be  change. 

"  Tito,"  she  said  at  last,  "  it  has  been  altogether  painful,  but 
I  must  tell  you  everything.  Your  strength  will  help  me  to 
resist  the  impressions  that  will  not  be  shaken  off  by  reason." 

"  I  know,  Romola  —  I  know  he  is  dead,"  said  Tito ;  and  the 
long  lustrous  eyes  told  nothing  of  the  many  wishes  that  would 
have  brought  about  that  death  long  ago  if  there  had  been  such 
potency  in  mere  wishes.  Romola  only  read  her  own  pure 
thoughts  in  their  dark  depths,  as  we  read  letters  in  happy 
dreams. 


UNDER    THE  LOGGIA.  165 

"  So  changed,  Tito !  It  pierced  me  to  think  that  it  was 
Dino.  And  so  strangely  hard  :  not  a  word  to  my  father ; 
nothing  but  a  vision  that  he  wanted  to  tell  me.  And  yet  it 
was  so  piteous  —  the  struggling  breath,  and  the  eyes  that 
seemed  to  look  towards  the  crucifix,  and  yet  not  to  see  it.  I 
shall  never  forget  it ;  it  seems  as  if  it  would  come  between  me 
and  everything  I  shall  look  at." 

Romola's  heart  swelled  again,  so  that  she  was  forced  to 
break  oif.  But  the  need  she  felt  to  disburden  her  mind  to 
Tito  urged  her  to  repress  the  rising  anguish.  When  she  began 
to  speak  again,  her  thoughts  had  travelled  a  little. 

''  It  was  strange,  Tito.  The  vision  was  about  our  marriage, 
and  yet  he  knew  nothing  of  you." 

"  What  was  it,  my  Romola  ?  Sit  down  and  tell  me,"  said 
Tito,  leading  her  to  the  bench  that  stood  near.  A  fear  had 
come  across  him  lest  the  vision  should  somehow  or  other  relate 
to  Baldassarre ;  and  this  sudden  change  of  feeling  prompted 
him  to  seek  a  change  of  position. 

Romola  told  him  all  that  had  passed,  from  her  entrance  into 
San  Marco,  hardly  leaving  out  one  of  her  brother's  words, 
which  had  burnt  themselves  into  her  memory  as  they  were 
spoken.  But  when  she  was  at  the  end  of  the  vision,  she 
paused ;  the  rest  came  too  vividly  before  her  to  be  uttered, 
and  she  sat  looking  at  the  distance,  almost  unconscious  for  the 
moment  that  Tito  was  near  her.  His  mind  was  at  ease  now  ; 
that  vague  vision  had  passed  over  him  like  white  mist,  and 
left  no  mark.  But  he  was  silent,  expecting  her  to  speak 
again. 

"  I  took  it,"  she  went  on,  as  if  Tito  had  been  reading  her 
thoughts  ;  *'  I  took  the  crucifix  ;  it  is  down  below  in  my  bed- 
room." 

"And  now,  my  Romola,"  said  Tito,  entreatingly,  "you  will 
banish  these  ghastly  thoughts.  The  vision  was  an  ordinary 
monkish  vision,  bred  of  fasting  and  fanatical  ideas.  It  surely 
has  no  weight  with  you." 

"  No,  Tito  ;  no.  But  poor  Dino,  lie  believed  it  was  a  divine 
message.  It  is  strange,"  she  went  on  meditatively,  "  this  life 
of  men  possessed  with  fervid  beliefs  that  seem  like  madness 
to  their  fellow-beings.  Dino  was  not  a  vulgar  fanatic ;  and 
Fra  Girolamo  —  his  very  voice  seems  to  have  penetrated  me 
with  a  sense  that  there  is  some  truth  in  Avhat  moves  them  : 
some  truth  of  which  I  know  nothing." 

"  It  was  only  because  your  feelings  were  highly  wrought,  my 
Romola.     Your  brother's  state  oi  mind  was  no  more  than  a 


166  ROMOLA. 

form  of  that  theosophy  which  has  been  the  common  disease  of 
excitable  dreamy  minds  in  all  ages  ;  the  same  ideas  that  your 
father's  old  antagonist,  Marsilio  Ficino,  pores  over  in  the  New 
Platonists  ;  only  your  brother's  passionate  nature  drove  him  to 
act  out  what  other  men  write  and  talk  about.  And  for  Fra 
Girolamo,  he  is  simply  a  narrow-minded  monk,  with  a  gift  of 
preaching  and  infusing  terror  into  the  multitude.  Any  words 
or  any  voice  would  have  shaken  you  at  that  moment.  When 
your  mind  has  had  a  little  repose,  you  will  judge  of  such 
things  as  you  have  always  done  before." 

"  iSTot  about  poor  Dino,"  said  Eomola.  "  I  was  angry  with 
him ;  my  heart  seemed  to  close  against  him  while  he  was 
speaking ;  but  since  then  I  have  thought  less  of  what  was  in 
my  own  mind  and  more  of  what  was  in  his.  Oh,  Tito  !  it  was 
very  piteous  to  see  his  young  life  coming  to  an  end  in  that 
way.  That  yearning  look  at  the  crucifix  when  he  was  gasping 
for  breath  —  I  can  never  forget  it.  Last  night  I  looked  at  the 
crucifix  a  long  while,  and  tried  to  see  that  it  would  help  him, 
until  at  last  it  seemed  to  me  by  the  lamplight  as  if  the  suffer- 
ing face  shed  pity." 

"  My  Komola,  promise  me  to  resist  such  thoughts ;  they  are 
fit  for  sickly  nuns,  not  for  my  golden-tressed  Aurora,  who 
looks  made  to  scatter  all  such  twilight  fantasies.  Try  not  to 
think  of  them  now;  we  shall  not  long  be  alone  together." 

The  last  words  were  uttered  in  a  tone  of  tender  beseeching, 
and  he  turned  her  face  towards  him  with  a  gentle  touch  of 
his  right  hand. 

Romola  had  had  her  eyes  fixed  absently  on  the  arched  open- 
ing, but  she  had  not  seen  the  distant  hill ;  she  had  all  the 
while  been  in  the  chapter-house,  looking  at  the  pale  images  of 
sorrow  and  death. 

Tito's  touch  and  beseeching  voice  recalled  her ;  and  now  in 
the  warm  sunlight  she  saw  that  rich  dark  beauty  which 
seemed  to  gather  round  it  all  images  of  joy  —  purple  vines 
festooned  between  the  elms,  the  strong  corn  perfecting  itself 
under  the  vibrating  heat,  bright  winged  creatures  hurrying 
and  resting  among  the  flowers,  round  limbs  beating  the  earth 
in  gladness  with  cymbals  held  aloft,  light  melodies  chanted  to 
the  thrilling  rhythm  of  strings  —  all  objects  and  all  sounds 
that  tell  of  Nature  revelling  in  her  force.  Strange,  bewilder- 
ing transition  from  those  pale  images  of  sorrow  and  death  to 
this  bright  youthfulness,  as  of  a  sun-god  who  knew  nothing  of 
night !  What  thought  could  reconcile  that  worn  anguish  in 
her  brother's  face  —  that  straininar  after  somethinsr  invisible 


UNDER    THE  LOGGIA.  167 

—  with  this  satisfied  strength  and  beauty,  and  make  it  intel- 
ligible that  they  belonged  to  the  same  world  ?  Or  was  there 
never  any  reconciling  of  them,  but  only  a  blind  worship  of 
clashing  deities,  first  in  mad  joy  and  then  in  wailing  ? 
Romola  for  the  first  time  felt  this  questioning  need  like  a 
sudden  uneasy  dizziness  and  want  of  something  to  grasp ;  it 
was  an  experience  hardly  longer  than  a  sigh,  for  the  eager 
theorizing  of  ages  is  compressed,  as  in  a  seed,  in  the  moment- 
ary want  of  a  single  mind.  But  there  was  no  answer  to 
meet  the  need,  and  it  vanished  before  the  returning  rush  of 
young  sympathy  with  the  glad  loving  beauty  that  beamed 
upon  her  in  new  radiance,  like  the  dawn  after  we  have  looked 
away  from  it  to  the  gray  west. 

"  Your  mind  lingers  apart  from  our  love,  my  Romola,"  Tito 
said,  with  a  soft  reproachful  murmur.  "  It  seems  a  forgotten 
thing  to  you." 

She  looked  at  the  beseeching  eyes  in  silence,  till  the  sadness 
•■ill  melted  out  of  her  own. 

"*  My  j;oy  .■  "  she  said,  in  her  full  clear  voice. 

''Do  you  really  care  for  me  enough,  then,  to  banish  those 
chill  fancies,  or  shall  you  ahvays  be  suspecting  me  as  the 
Great  Tempter  ?  "  said  Tito,  with  his  bright  smile. 

"  How  should  I  not  care  for  you  more  than  for  everything 
else  ?  Everything  I  had  felt  before  in  all  my  life  —  about 
my  father,  and  about  my  loneliness  —  was  a  preparation  to 
love  you.  You  would  laugh  at  me,  Tito,  if  you  knew  what 
sort  of  man  I  used  to  think  I  should  marry  —  some  scholar 
with  deep  lines  in  his  face,  like  Alamanno  Rinuccini,  and 
with  rather  gray  hair,  who  would  agree  with  my  father  in 
taking  the  side  of  the  Aristotelians,  and  be  willing  to  live 
with  him.  I  used  to  think  about  the  love  I  read  of  in  the 
poets,  but  I  never  dreamed  that  anything  like  that  could 
happen  to  me  here  in  Florence  in  our  old  library.  And  then 
you  came,  Tito,  and  were  so  much  to  my  father,  and  I  began 
to  believe  that  life  could  be  happy  for  me  too." 

"  My  goddess  !  is  there  any  woman  like  you  ?  "  said  Tito, 
with  a  mixture  of  fondness  and  wondering  admiration  at  the 
blended  majesty  and  simplicity  in  her. 

"  But,  dearest,"  he  went  on,  rather  timidly,  "  if  you  minded 
more  about  our  marriage,  you  would  persuade  your  father  and 
Messer  Bernardo  not  to  think  of  any  more  delays.  But  you 
seem  not  to  mind  about  it." 

"Yes,  Tito,  I  will,  I  do  mind.  But  I  am  sure  my  godfather 
will  urge  more  delay  now,  because  of  Pino's  death.     He  has 


168  ROMOLA. 

never  agreed  with  my  father  about  disowning  Dino,  and  you 
know  he  has  always  said  that  we  ought  to  wait  until  you  have 
been  at  least  a  year  in  Florence.  Do  not  think  hardly  of  my 
godfather.  I  know  he  is  prejudiced  and  narrow,  but  yet  he 
is  very  noble.  He  has  often  said  that  it  is  folly  in  my  father 
to  want  to  keep  his  library  apart,  that  it  may  bear  his  name ; 
yet  he  would  try  to  get  my  father's  wish  carried  out.  That 
seems  to  me  very  great  and  noble  —  that  power  of  respecting 
a  feeling  which  he  does  not  share  or  understand." 

''  I  have  no  rancor  against  Messer  Bernardo  for  thinking 
you  too  precious  for  me,  my  Romola,"  said  Tito :  and  that 
was  true.    "  But  your  father,  then,  knows  of  his  sou's  death  ?  " 

''  Yes,  I  told  him  —  I  could  not  help  it.  I  told  him  where 
I  had  been,  and  that  I  had  seen  Dino  die ;  but  nothing  else  ; 
and  he  has  commanded  me  not  to  speak  of  it  again.  But  he 
has  been  very  silent  this  morning,  and  has  had  those  restless 
movements  which  always  go  to  my  heart ;  they  look  as  if  he 
were  trying  to  get  outside  the  prison  of  his  blindness.  Let 
us  go  to  him  now.  I  had  persuaded  him  to  try  to  sleep, 
because  he  slept  little  in  the  night.  Your  voice  will  soothe 
him,  Tito  :  it  always  does." 

"  And  not  one  kiss  ?  I  have  not  had  one,"  said  Tito,  in  his 
gentle  reproachful  tone,  which  gave  him  an  air  of  depend- 
ence very  charming  in  a  creature  with  those  rare  gifts  that 
seem  to  excuse  presumption. 

The  sweet  pink  blush  spread  itself  with  the  quickness  of 
light  over  Romola's  face  and  neck  as  she  bent  towards  him. 
It  seemed  impossible  that  their  kisses  could  ever  become 
common  things. 

"  Let  us  walk  once  round  the  loggia,"  said  Romola,  "  before 
we  go  down." 

"  There  is  something  grim  and  grave  to  me  always  about 
Florence,"  said  Tito,  as  they  paused  in  the  front  of  the  house, 
where  they  could  see  over  the  opposite  roofs  to  the  other  side 
of  the  river,  "  and  even  in  its  merriment  there  is  something 
shrill  and  hard  —  biting  rather  than  gay.  I  wish  we  lived  in 
Southern  Italy,  where  thought  is  broken,  not  by  weariness, 
but  by  delicious  languors  such  as  never  seem  to  come  over  the 
'  ingenia  acerrima  Florentina.'  I  should  like  to  see  you  under 
that  southern  sun,  lying  among  the  flowers,  subdued  into 
mere  enjoyment,  while  I  bent  over  you  and  touched  the  lute 
and  sang  to  you  some  little  unconscious  strain  that  seemed  all 
one  with  the  light  and  the  warmth.  You  have  never  known 
that  happiness  of  the  nymphs,  my  Romola," 


THE  PORTRAIT.  169 

"  No ;  but  I  have  dreamed  of  it  often  since  you  came.  I 
am  very  thirsty  for  a  deep  draught  of  joy  —  for  a  life  all 
bright  like  you.  But  we  will  not  think  of  it  now,  Tito  ;  it 
seems  to  me  as  if  there  would  always  be  pale  sad  faces  among 
the  flowers,  and  eyes  that  look  in  vain.     Let  us  go." 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE    PORTRAIT. 

When  Tito  left  the  Via  de'  Bardi  that  day  in  exultant 
satisfaction  at  finding  himself  thoroughly  free  from  the 
threatened  peril,  his  thoughts,  no  longer  claimed  by  the  im- 
mediate presence  of  Romola  and  her  father,  recurred  to  those 
futile  hours  of  dread  in  which  he  was  conscious  of  having  not 
only  felt  but  acted  as  he  would  not  have  done  if  he  had  had  a 
truer  foresight.  He  would  not  have  parted  with  his  ring ;  for 
Romola,  and  others  to  whom  it  was  a  familiar  object,  would 
be  a  little  struck  with  the  apparent  sordidness  of  parting  with 
a  gem  he  had  professedly  cherished,  unless  he  feigned  as  a 
reason  the  desire  to  make  some  special  gift  with  the  purchase- 
money  ;  and  Tito  had  at  that  moment  a  nauseating  weariness 
of  simulation.  He  was  well  out  of  the  possible  consequences 
that  might  have  fallen  on  him  from  that  initial  deception,  and 
it  was  no  longer  a  load  on  his  mind  ;  kind  fortune  had  brought 
him  immunity,  and  he  thought  it  was  only  fair  that  she 
should.  Who  was  hurt  by  it  ?  The  results  to  Baldassarre 
were  too  problematical  to  be  taken  into  account.  But  he 
wanted  now  to  be  free  from  any  hidden  shackles  that  would 
gall  him,  though  ever  so  little,  under  his  ties  to  Romola.  He 
was  not  aware  that  that  very  delight  in  immunity  which 
prompted  resolutions  not  to  entangle  himself  again,  was  dead- 
ening the  sensibilities  which  alone  could  save  him  from  en- 
tanglement. 

But,  after  all,  the  sale  of  the  ring  was  a  slight  matter. 
Was  it  also  a  slight  matter  that  little  Tessa  was  under  a  delu- 
sion which  would  doubtless  fill  her  small  head  with  expectations 
doomed  to  disappointment  ?  Should  he  try  to  see  the  little 
thing  alone  again  and  undeceive  her  at  once,  or  should  he  leave 
the  disclosure  to  time  and  chance  ?  Happy  dreams  are  pleasant, 
and  they  easily  come  to  an  end  with  daylight  and  the  stir  of 


170  ROMOLA. 

life.  The  sweet,  pouting,  innocent,  round  thing !  It  was  im. 
possible  not  to  think  of  her.  Tito  thought  he  should  like 
some  time  to  take  her  a  present  that  would  please  her,  and 
just  learn  if  her  step-father  treated  her  more  cruelly  now  her 
mother  was  dead.  Or,  should  he  at  once  undeceive  Tessa,  and 
then  tell  Romola  about  her,  so  that  they  might  find  some  hap- 
pier lot  for  the  poor  thing  ?  No:  that  unfortunate  little  in- 
cident of  the  cerretano  and  the  marriage,  and  his  allowing 
Tessa  to  part  from  him  in  delusion,  must  never  be  known  to 
Komola,  and  since  no  enlightenment  could  expel  it  from 
Tessa's  mind,  there  would  ahvays  be  a  risk  of  betrayal ;  be- 
sides even  little  Tessa  might  have  some  gall  in  her  when  she 
found  herself  disappointed  in  her  love  —  yes,  she  viust  be  a 
little  in  love  with  him,  and  that  might  make  it  well  that  he 
should  not  see  her  again.  Yet  it  was  a  trifling  adventure 
such  as  a  country  girl  would  perhaps  ponder  on  till  some  ruddy 
contadino  made  acceptable  love  to  her,  when  she  would  break 
her  resolution  of  secrecy  and  get  at  the  truth  that  she  was  free. 
Dxinque  —  ^oodi-hj ,  Tessa!  kindest  wishes!  Tito  had  made  up 
his  mind  that  the  silly  little  affair  of  the  cerretano  should 
have  no  further  consequences  for  himself ;  and  people  are  apt 
to  think  that  resolutions  taken  on  their  own  behalf  will  be 
firm.  As  for  the  fifty-five  florins,  the  purchase-money  of  the 
ring,  Tito  had  made  up  his  mind  what  to  do  with  some  of  them ; 
he  would  carry  out  a  pretty  ingenious  thought  which  would  set 
him  more  at  ease  in  accounting  for  the  absence  of  his  ring  to 
Romola,  and  would  also  serve  him  as  a  means  of  guarding  her 
mind  from  the  recurrence  of  those  monkish  fancies  which 
were  especially  repugnant  to  him  ;  and  with  this  thought  in 
his  mind,  he  went  to  the  Via  Gualfonda  to  find  Piero  di  Cosimo, 
the  artist  who  at  that  time  was  pre-eminent  in  the  fantastic 
mythological  design  which  Tito's  purpose  required. 

Entering  the  court  on  which  Piero's  dwelling  opened,  Tito 
found  the  heavy  iron  knocker  on  the  door  thickly  bound  round 
with  wool  and  ingeniously  fastened  with  cords.  Remember- 
ing the  painter's  practice  of  stuffing  his  ears  against  obtrusive 
noises,  Tito  was  not  much  surprised  at  this  mode  of  defence 
against  visitors'  thunder,  and  betook  himself  first  to  tapping 
modestly  with  his  knuckles,  and  then  to  a  more  importunate 
attempt  to  shake  the  door.  In  vain  !  Tito  was  moving  away, 
blaming  himself  for  wasting  his  time  on  this  visit,  instead  of 
waiting  till  he  saw  the  painter  again  at  Nello's,  when  a  little 
girl  entered  the  court  with  a  basket  of  eggs  on  her  arm,  went 
up  to  the  door,  and  standing  on  tiptoe,  pushed  up  a  small  iron 


THE  PORTRAIT.  171 

plate  that  ran  in  grooves,  and  putting  her  mouth  to  the  aper- 
ture thus  disclosed,  called  out  in  a  piping  voice,  "  Messer 
Piero  ! " 

In  a  few  moments  Tito  heard  the  sound  of  bolts,  the  door 
opened,  and  Piero  presented  himself  in  a  red  night-cap  and  a 
loose  brown  serge  tunic,  with  sleeves  rolled  up  to  the  shoul- 
der. He  darted  a  look  of  surprise  at  Tito,  but  without  further 
notice  of  him  stretched  out  his  hand  to  take  the  basket  from 
the  chiki,  re-entered  the  house,  and  presently  returning  with 
the  empty  basket,  said,  ''  How  much  to  pay  ?  " 

"  Two  grossoni,  Messer  Piero  ;  they  are  all  ready  boiled,  my 
mother  says." 

Piero  took  the  coin  out  of  the  leathern  scarsella  at  his  belt, 
and  the  little  maiden  trotted  away,  not  without  a  few  upward 
glances  of  awed  admiration  at  the  surprising  young  signor. 

Piero's  glance  was  much  less  complimentary  as  he  said, — 

"  What  do  you  want  at  my  door,  Messer  Greco  ?  I  saw  you 
this  morning  at  ISTello's  ;  if  you  had  asked  me  then,  I  could 
have  told  you  that  I  see  no  man  in  this  house  without  knowing 
his  business  and  agreeing  with  him  beforehand." 

"  Pardon,  Messer  Piero,"  said  Tito,  with  his  imperturbable 
good-humor  ;  "  I  acted  without  sufficient  reflection.  I  remem- 
bered nothing  but  your  admirable  skill  in  inventing  pretty  ca- 
prices, when  a  sudden  desire  for  something  of  that  sort 
prompted  me  to  come  to  you." 

The  painter's  manners  were  too  notoriously  odd  to  all  the 
world  for  this  reception  to  be  held  a  special  affront ;  but  even 
if  Tito  had  suspected  any  offensive  intention,  the  impulse 
to  resentment  would  have  been  less  strong  in  him  than  the 
desire  to  conquer  good-will. 

Piero  made  a  grimace  which  was  habitual  with  him  when  he 
was  spoken  to  with  flattering  suavity.  He  grinned,  stretched 
out  the  corners  of  his  mouth,  and  pressed  down  his  brows  so 
as  to  defy  any  divination  of  his  feelings  under  that  kind  of 
stroking. 

"And  what  may  that  need  be  ?  "  he  said,  after  a  moment's 
pause.  In  his  heart  he  was  tempted  by  the  hinted  opportu- 
nity of  applying  his  invention. 

"  I  want  a  very  delicate  miniature  device  taken  from  cer- 
tain fables  of  the  poets,  which  you  will  know  how  to  combine 
for  me.  It  must  be  painted  on  a  wooden  case  —  I  will  show 
you  the  size  —  in  the  form  of  a  triptych.  The  inside  may  be 
simple  gilding :  it  is  on  the  outside  I  want  the  device.  It  is 
a   favorite   subject  with  you   Florentines — the   triumph  of 


172  ROMOLA. 

Bacchus  and  Ariadne  ;  but  I  want  it  treated  in  a  new  way.  A 
story  in  Ovid  will  give  you  the  necessary  hints.  The  young 
Bacchus  must  be  seated  in  a  ship,  his  head  bound  with  clus- 
ters of  grapes,  and  a  spear  intwined  with  vine-leaves  in  his 
hand:  dark-berried  ivy  must  wind  about  the  masts  and  sails, 
the  oars  must  be  thyrsi,  and  flowers  must  wreathe  themselves 
about  the  poop ;  leopards  and  tigers  must  be  crouching  before 
him,  and  dolphins  must  be  sporting  round.  But  I  want  to 
have  the  fair-haired  Ariadne  with  him,  made  immortal  with 
her  golden  crown  —  that  is  not  in  Ovid's  story,  but  no  matter, 
you  will  conceive  it  all  —  and  above  there  must  be  young 
Loves,  such  as  you  know  how  to  paint  shooting  with  roses  at 
the  points  of  their  arrows  "  — 

"Say  no  more  !"  said  Piero.  "I  have  Ovid  in  the  vulgar 
tongue.  Find  me  the  passage.  I  love  not  to  be  choked  with 
other  men's  thoughts.     You  may  come  in." 

Piero  led  the  way  through  the  first  room,  where  a  basket  of 
eggs  was  deposited  on  the  open  hearth,  near  a  heap  of  broken 
egg-shells  and  a  bank  of  ashes.  In  strange  keeping  with  that 
sordid  litter,  there  was  a  low  bedstead  of  carved  ebony,  cov- 
ered carelessly  with  a  piece  of  rich  Oriental  carpet,  that 
looked  as  if  it  had  served  to  cover  the  steps  to  a  Madonna's 
throne ;  and  a  carved  cassone,  or  large  chest,  with  painted 
devices  on  its  sides  and  lid.  There  was  hardly  any  other  fur- 
niture in  the  large  room,  except  casts,  wooden  steps,  easels  and 
rough  boxes,  all  festooned  with  cobwebs. 

The  next  room  was  still  larger,  but  it  was  also  much  more 
crowded.  Apparently  Piero  was  keeping  the  Festa,  for  the 
double  door  underneath  the  window  which  admitted  the 
painter's  light  from  above,  was  thrown  open,  and  showed  a 
garden,  or  rather  thicket,  in  which  fig-trees  and  vines  grew  in 
tangled  trailing  wildness  among  nettles  and  hemlocks,  and  a 
tall  cypress  lifted  its  dark  head  from  a  stifling  mass  of  yel- 
lowish mulberry  leaves.  It  seemed  as  if  that  dank  luxuriance 
had  begun  to  penetrate  even  within  the  walls  of  the  wide 
and  lofty  room  ;  for  in  one  corner,  amidst  a  confused  heap  of 
carved  marble  fragments  and  rusty  armor,  tufts  of  long  grass 
and  dark  feathery  fennel  had  made  their  way,  and  a  large 
stone  vase,  tilted  on  one  side,  seemed  to  be  pouring  out  the  ivy 
that  streamed  around.  All  about  the  walls  hung  pen  and  oil 
sketches  of  fantastic  sea-monsters ;  dances  of  satyrs  and 
maenads ;  Saint  Margaret's  resurrection  out  of  the  devouring 
dragon;  Madonnas  with  the  supernal  liglit  upon  them  ;  studies 
of  plants  and  grotesque  heads  ;  and  on  irregular  rough  shelves 


THE  PORTRAIT.  173 

a  few  books  were  scattered  among  great  drooping  bunches  of 
corn,  bullocks'  horns,  pieces  of  dried  honeycomb,  stones  with 
patches  of  rare-colored  lichen,  skulls  and  bones,  peacocks' 
feathers,  and  large  birds'  wings.  Rising  from  amongst  the 
dirty  litter  of  the  floor  were  lay  figures  :  one  in  the  frock  of  a 
Vallombrosan  monk,  strangely  surmounted  by  a  helmet  with 
barred  visor,  another  smothered  with  brocade  and  skins  hastily 
tossed  over  it.  Amongst  this  heterogeneous  still  life,  several 
speckled  and  white  pigeons  were  perched  or  strutting,  too 
tame  to  fly  at  the  entrance  of  men  ;  three  corpulent  toads 
were  crawling  in  an  intimate  friendly  way  near  the  door-stone  ; 
and  a  white  rabbit,  apparently  the  model  for  that  which  was 
frightening  Cupid  in  the  picture  of  Mars  and  Venus  placed  on 
the  central  easel,  was  twitching  its  nose  with  much  content  on 
a  box  full  of  bran. 

"  And  now,  Messer  Greco,"  said  Piero,  making  a  sign  to 
Tito  that  he  might  sit  down  on  a  low  stool  near  the  door,  and 
then  standing  over  him  with  folded  arms,  "  don't  be  trying  to 
see  everything  at  once,  like  Messer  Domeneddio,  but  let  me 
know  how  large  you  would  have  this  same  triptych." 

Tito  indicated  the  required  dimensions,  and  Piero  marked 
them  on  a  piece  of  paper. 

"  And  now  for  the  book,"  said  Piero,  reaching  down  a  manu- 
script volume. 

"  There's  nothing  about  the  Ariadne  there,"  said  Tito,  giving 
him  the  passage  ;  "  but  you  will  remember  I  want  the  crowned 
Ariadne  by  the  side  of  the  young  Bacchus :  she  must  have 
golden  hair." 

"  Ha ! "  said  Piero,  abruptly,  pursing  up  his  lips  again. 
"  And  you  want  them  to  be  likenesses,  eh  ?  "  he  added,  looking 
down  into  Tito's  face. 

Tito  laughed  and  blushed.  "I  know  you  are  great  at  por- 
traits, Messer  Piero ;  but  I  could  not  ask  Ariadne  to  sit  for 
you,  because  the  painting  is  a  secret." 

"  There  it  is  !  I  want  her  to  sit  to  me.  Giovanni  Vespucci 
wants  me  to  paint  him  a  picture  of  (Edipus  and  Antigone  at 
Colonos,  as  he  has  expounded  it  to  me  ;  I  have  a  fancy  for 
the  subject,  and  I  want  Bardo  and  his  daughter  to  sit  for  it. 
Now,  you  ask  them ;  and  then  I'll  put  the  likeness  into 
Ariadne." 

"  Agreed,  if  I  can  prevail  with  them.  And  your  price  for 
the  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  ?  " 

"  Bale  !  If  you  get  them  to  let  me  paint  them,  that  will  pay 
me.  I'd  rather  not  have  your  money  :  you  may  pay  for  the 
case." 


174  ROMOLA. 

"  And  when  shall  I  sit  for  you  ?  "  said  Tito ;  "  for  if  we 
have  one  likeness,  we  must  have  two." 

"  I  don't  want  your  likeness  ;  I've  got  it  already,"  said  Piero, 
"  only  I've  made  you  look  frightened.  I  must  take  the  fright 
out  of  it  for  Bacchus." 

As  he  Avas  speaking,  Piero  laid  down  the  book  and  went  to 
look  among  some  paintings,  propped  with  their  faces  against 
the  wall.     He  returned  with  an  oil-sketch  in  his  hand. 

"■  I  call  this  as  good  a  bit  of  portrait  as  I  ever  did,"  he  said, 
looking  at  it  as  he  advanced.  "  Yours  is  a  face  that  expresses 
fear  well,  because  it's  naturally  a  bright  one.  I  noticed  it  the 
first  time  I  saw  you.  The  rest  of  the  picture  is  hardly  sketched ; 
but  I've  painted  you  in  thoroughly." 

Piero  turned  the  sketch,  and  held  it  towards  Tito's  eyes. 
He  saw  himself  with  his  right  hand  uplifted,  holding  a  wine- 
cup,  in  the  attitude  of  triumphant  joy,  but  with  his  face  turned 
away  from  the  cup  with  an  expression  of  such  intense  fear  in 
the  dilated  eyes  and  pallid  lips,  that  he  felt  a  cold  stream 
through  his  veins,  as  if  he  were  being  thrown  into  sympathy 
with  his  imaged  self. 

"  You  are  beginning  to  look  like  it  already,"  said  Piero,  with 
a  short  laugh,  moving  the  picture  away  again.  "  He's  seeing 
a  ghost  —  that  fine  young  man.  I  shall  finish  it  some  day, 
when  I've  settled  what  sort  of  ghost  is  the  most  terrible  — 
whether  it  should  look  solid,  like  a  dead  man  come  to  life,  or 
half  transparent,  like  a  mist." 

Tito,  rather  ashamed  of  himself  for  a  sudden  sensitiveness 
strangely  opposed  to  his  usual  easy  self-command,  said 
carelessly,  — 

"  That  is  a  subject  after  your  own  heart,  Messer  Piero  — 
a  revel  interrupted  by  a  ghost.  You  seem  to  love  the  blending 
of  the  terrible  with  the  gay,  I  suppose  that  is  the  reason 
your  shelves  are  so  well  furnished  with  death's-heads,  while 
you  are  painting  those  roguish  Loves  who  are  running  away 
with  the  armor  of  Mars.  I  begin  to  think  you  are  a  Cynic 
philosopher  in  the  pleasant  disguise  of  a  cunning  painter." 

"  Not  I,  Messer  Greco  :  a  philosopher  is  the  last  sort  of 
animal  I  should  choose  to  resemble.  I  find  it  enough  to  live, 
Avithout  spinning  lies  to  account  for  life.  Fowls  cackle,  asses 
bray,  women  chatter,  and  philosophers  spin  false  reasons  — 
that's  the  effect  the  sight  of  the  world  brings  out  of  them. 
Well,  I  am  an  animal  that  paints  instead  of  cackling,  or 
braying,  or  spinning  lies.  And  now,  I  think,  our  business  is 
done  ;  you'll  keep  to  your  side  of  the  bargain  about  the  (Edipus 
and  Antigone  ?  " 


THE   OLD  MAN'S  HOPE.  175 

*'  I  will  do  my  best,"  said  Tito  —  on  this  strong  hint  imme- 
diately moving  towards  the  door. 

"  And  you'll  let  me  know  at  Nello's.  No  need  to  come  here 
again." 

"I  understand,"  said  Tito,  laughingl}^,  lifting  his  hand  in 
sign  of  friendly  parting. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  OLD   man's   HOPE. 

Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero  was  as  inexorable  as  Romola 
had  expected  in  his  advice  that  the  marriage  should  be  deferred 
till  Easter,  and  in  this  matter  Bardo  was  entirely  under  the 
ascendency  of  his  sagacious  and  practical  friend.  Neverthe- 
less, Bernardo  himself,  though  he  was  as  far  as  ever  from  any 
susceptibility  to  the  personal  fascination  in  Tito  which  was 
felt  by  others,  could  not  altogether  resist  that  argument  of 
success  which  is  always  powerful  with  men  of  the  world.  Tito 
was  making  his  way  rapidly  in  high  quarters.  He  was  espe- 
cially growing  in  favor  with  the  young  Cardinal  Giovanni  de' 
Medici,  who  had  even  spoken  of  Tito's  forming  part  of  his 
learned  retinue  on  an  approaching  journey  to  Rome  ;  and  the 
bright  young  Greek,  who  had  a  tongue  that  was  always  ready 
without  ever  being  quarrelsome,  was  more  and  more  wished 
for  at  gay  suppers  in  the  Via  Larga,  and  at  Florentine  games 
in  which  he  had  no  pretension  to  excel,  and  could  admire 
the  incomparable  skill  of  Piero  de'  Medici  in  the  most  graceful 
manner  in  the  world.  By  an  unfailing  sequence,  Tito's  repu- 
tation as  an  agreeable  companion  in  "  magnificent "  society 
made  his  learning  and  talent  appear  more  lustrous  :  and  he  was 
really  accomplished  enough  to  prevent  an  exaggerated  estimate 
from  being  hazardous  to  him.  Messer  Bernardo  had  old  pre- 
judices and  attachments  which  now  began  to  argue  down  the 
newer  and  feebler  prejudice  against  the  young  Greek  stranger 
who  was  rather  too  supple.  To  the  old  Florentine  it  was 
impossible  to  despise  the  recommendation  of  standing  well 
with  the  best  Florentine  families,  and  since  Tito  began  to  be 
thoroughly  received  into  that  circle  whose  views  were  the 
unquestioned  standard  of  social  value,  it  seemed  irrational  not 
to  admit  that  there  was  no  longer  any  check  to  satisfaction  in 


176  ROM  OLA. 

the  prospect  of  such  a  son-in-law  for  Bardo,  and  such  a  husband 
for  Romola.  It  was  undeniable  that  Tito's  coming  had  been 
the  dawn  of  a  new  life  for  both  father  and  daughter,  and  the 
first  promise  had  even  been  surpassed.  The  blind  old  scholar 
—  whose  proud  truthfulness  would  never  enter  into  that  com- 
merce of  feigned  and  preposterous  admiration  which,  varied 
by  a  corresponding  raeasurelessness  in  vituperation,  made  the 
woof  of  all  learned  intercourse  —  had  fallen  into  neglect  even 
among  his  fellow-citizens,  and  when  he  was  alluded  to  at  all, 
it  had  long  been  usual  to  say  that,  though  his  blindness  and 
the  loss  of  his  son  were  pitiable  misfortunes,  he  was  tiresome 
in  contending  for  the  value  of  his  own  labors  ;  and  that  his 
discontent  was  a  little  inconsistent  in  a  man  who  had  been 
openly  regardless  of  religious  rites,  and  who  in  days  past  had 
refused  offers  made  to  him  from  various  quarters,  on  the  slight 
condition  that  he  would  take  orders,  without  which  it  was  not 
easy  for  patrons  to  provide  for  every  scholar.  But  since  Tito's 
coming,  there  was  no  longer  the  same  monotony  in  the  thought 
that  Bardo's  name  suggested ;  the  old  man,  it  was  understood, 
had  left  off  his  plaints,  and  the  fair  daughter  was  no  longer  to 
be  shut  up  in  dowerless  pride,  waiting  for  a  pareyitado.  The 
winning  manners  and  growing  favor  of  the  handsome  Greek 
who  was  expected  to  enter  into  the  double  relation  of  son  and 
husband  helped  to  make  the  new  interest  a  thoroughly  friendly 
one,  and  it  was  no  longer  a  rare  occurrence  when  a  visitor 
enlivened  the  quiet  library.  Elderly  men  came  from  that 
indefinite  prompting  to  renew  former  intercourse  which  arises 
when  an  old  acquaintance  begins  to  be  newly  talked  about ; 
and  young  men  whom  Tito  had  asked  leave  to  bring  once,  found 
it  easy  to  go  again  when  they  overtook  him  on  his  way  to  the 
Via  de'  Bardi,  and,  resting  their  hands  on  his  shoulder,  fell 
into  easy  chat  with  him.  For  it  was  pleasant  to  look  at 
Romola's  beauty ;  to  see  her,  like  old  Firenzuola's  type  of 
womanly  majesty,  "  sitting  with  a  certain  grandeur,  speaking 
with  gravity,  smiling  with  modesty,  and  casting  around,  as  it 
were,  an  odor  of  queenliness  ;  "  ^  and  she  seemed  to  unfold  like 
a  strong  white  lily  under  this  genial  breath  of  admiration  and 
homage  ;  it  was  all  one  to  her  with  her  new  bright  life  in  Tito's 
love. 

Tito  had  even  been  the  means  of  strengthening  the  hope  in 
Bardo's  mind  that  he  might  before  his  death  receive  the  longed- 

1  "  Quando  una  donna  h  grande,  ben  formata,  porta  ben  sua  persona,  siede  coe. 
una  certa  f;randezza,  parla  con  u:ravitk,  ride  con  rnodestia,  e  finalmente  getfa  quasi 
un  odor  di  Regina  ;  allora  noi  diciaino  quella  donna  pare  una  niaestk,  ella  ha  una 
maestli."  —  Firknzuola  :  Delia  Belletza  delle  Donne. 


THE   OLD  MAN'S  HOPE.  177 

for  security  concerning  his  library  :  that  it  should,  not  be 
merged  in  another  collection  ;  that  it  should  not  be  transferred, 
to  a  body  of  monks,  and  be  called,  by  the  name  of  a  monas- 
tery ;  but  that  it  should  remain  forever  the  Bardi  Library,  for 
the  use  of  Florentines.  For  the  old  habit  of  trusting  in  the 
Medici  could  not  die  out  while  their  influence  was  still  the 
strongest  lever  in  the  State  ;  and  Tito,  once  possessing  the  ear 
of  the  Cardinal  Giovanni  de'  Medici,  might  do  more  even  than 
Messer  Bernardo  towards  winning  the  desired  interest,  for  he 
could  demonstrate  to  a  learned  audience  the  peculiar  value  of 
Bardi's  collection.  Tito  himself  talked  sanguinely  of  such  a 
result,  willing  to  cheer  the  old  man,  and  conscious  that 
Komola  repaid  those  gentle  words  to  her  father  with  a  sort  of 
adoration  that  no  direct  tribute  to  herself  could  have  won 
from  her. 

This  question  of  the  library  was  the  subject  of  more  than 
one  discussion  with  Bernardo  del  Nero  when  Christmas  was 
turned  and  the  prospect  of  the  marriage  was  becoming  near 
—  but  always  out  of  Bardo's  hearing.  For  Bardo  nursed  a 
vague  belief,  which  they  dared  not  disturb,  that  his  property, 
apart  from  the  library,  was  adequate  to  meet  all  demands. 
He  would  not  even,  except  under  a  momentary  pressure  of 
angry  despondency,  admit  to  himself  that  the  will  by  which 
he  had  disinherited  Dino  would  leave  Romola  the  heir  of  noth- 
ing but  debts  ;  or  that  he  needed  anything  from  patronage 
beyond  the  security  that  a  separate  locality  should  be  assigned 
to  his  library,  in  return  for  a  deed  of  gift  by  which  he  made 
it  over  to  the  Florentine  Eepublic. 

"  My  opinion  is,"  said  Bernardo  to  Romola,  in  a  consulta- 
tion they  had  under  the  loggia,  "  that  since  you  are  to  be  mar- 
ried, and  Messer  Tito  will  have  a  competent  income,  we  should 
begin  to  wind  up  the  affairs,  and  ascertain  exactly  the  sum 
that  would  be  necessary  to  save  the  library  from  being  touched, 
instead  of  letting  the  debts  accumulate  any  longer.  Your 
father  needs  nothing  but  his  shred  of  mutton  and  his  maca- 
roni every  day,  and  I  think  Messer  Tito  may  engage  to  supply 
that  for  the  years  that  remain ;  he  can  let  it  be  in  place  of  the 
rnorgen-capy 

"  Tito  has  always  known  that  my  life  is  bound  up  with  my 
father's,"  said  Romola ;  "  and  he  is  better  to  my  father  than  I 
am  :  he  delights  in  making  him  happy." 

"  Ah,  he's  not  made  of  the  same  clay  as  other  men,  is  he  ?" 
said  Bernardo,  smiling.  "  Thy  father  has  thought  of  shutting 
woman's  folly  out  of  thee  by  cramming  thee  with  Greek  and 


178  ROMOLA. 

Latin  ;  but  thou  hast  been  as  ready  to  believe  in  the  first  pair 
of  bright  eyes  and  the  first  soft  words  that  have  come  within 
reach  of  thee,  as  if  thou  couldst  say  nothing  by  heart  but 
Paternosters,  like  other  Christian  men's  daughters." 

"  Now,  godfather,"  said  Romola,  shaking  her  head  playfully, 
'•'  as  if  it  were  only  bright  eyes  and  soft  words  that  made  me 
love  Tito  !  You  know  better.  You  know  I  love  my  father 
and  you  because  you  are  both  good,  and  I  love  Tito  too  be- 
cause he  is  so  good.  I  see  it,  I  feel  it,  in  everything  he  says 
and  does.  And  if  he  is  handsome,  too,  why  should  I  not  love 
him  the  better  for  that  ?  It  seems  to  me  beauty  is  part  of  the 
finished  language  by  which  goodness  speaks.  You  know  you 
must  have  been  a  very  handsome  youth,  godfather,"  —  she 
looked  up  with  one  of  her  happy,  loving  smiles  at  the  stately 
old  man  —  "  you  were  about  as  tall  as  Tito,  and  you  had  very 
fine  eyes ;  only  you  looked  a  little  sterner  and  prouder, 
and"  — 

"  And  Romola  likes  to  have  all  the  pride  to  herself  ?  "  said 
Bernardo,  not  inaccessible  to  this  pretty  coaxing.  "  However, 
it  is  well  that  in  one  way  Tito's  demands  are  more  modest  than 
those  of  any  Florentine  husband  of  fitting  rank  that  we  should 
have  been  likely  to  find  for  you;  he  wants  no  dowry," 

So  it  was  settled  in  that  way  between  Messer  Bernardo  del 
Nero,  Romola,  and  Tito.  Bardo  assented  with  a  wave  of  the 
hand  when  Bernardo  told  him  that  he  thought  it  would  be 
well  now  to  begin  to  sell  property  and  clear  off  debts  ;  being 
accustomed  to  think  of  debts  and  propert}^  as  a  sort  of  thick 
wood  that  his  imagination  never  even  penetrated,  still  less  got 
beyond.  And  Tito  set  about  winning  Messer  Bernardo's  re- 
spect by  inquiring,  with  his  ready  faculty,  into  Florentine 
money  matters,  the  secrets  of  the  Monti  or  public  funds,  the 
values  of  real  property,  and  the  profits  of  banking. 

"  You  will  soon  forget  that  Tito  is  not  a  Florentine,  god- 
father," said  Romola.  ''  See  how  he  is  learning  everything 
about  Florence." 

"  It  seems  to  me  he  is  one  of  the  dem.oni,  who  are  of  no  par- 
ticular country,  child,"  said  Bernardo,  smiling.  "  His  mind  is 
a  little  too  nimble  to  be  weighted  with  all  the  stuff  we  men 
carry  about  in  our  hearts." 

Romola  smiled  too,  in  happy  confidence. 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  BETROTHAL.  179 


CHAPTER    XX. 

THE    DAY    OF    THE    BETROTHAL. 

It  was  the  last  week  of  the  Carnival,  and  the  streets  of 
"Florence  were  at  their  fullest  and  noisiest :  there  were  the 
masked  processions,  chanting  songs,  indispensable  now  they 
had  once  been  introduced  by  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent ;  there 
was  the  favorite  rigoletto,  or  round  dance,  footed  "  in  piazza  " 
under  the  blue  frosty  sky  ;  there  were  practical  jokes  of  all 
sorts,  from  throwing  comfits  to  throwing  stones  —  especially 
stones.  For  the  boys  and  striplings,  always  a  strong  element 
in  Florentine  crowds,  became  at  the  height  of  Carnival-time 
as  loud  and  unmanageable  as  tree-crickets,  and  it  was  their 
immemorial  privilege  to  bar  the  way  with  poles  to  all  passen- 
gers, until  a  tribute  had  been  paid  towards  furnishing  those 
lovers  of  strong  sensations  with  suppers  and  bonfires  :  to  con- 
clude with  the  standing  entertainment  of  stone-throwing, 
which  was  not  entirely  monotonous,  since  the  consequent 
maiming  was  various,  and  it  was  not  always  a  single  person 
who  was  killed.  So  that  the  pleasures  of  the  Carnival  were 
of  a  checkered  kind,  and  if  a  painter  were  called  upon  to  rep- 
resent them  truly,  he  would  have  to  make  a  picture  in  which 
there  would  be  so  much  grossness  and  barbarity  that  it  must 
be  turned  with  its  face  to  the  wall,  except  when  it  was  taken 
down  for  the  grave  historical  purpose  of  justifying  a  reform- 
ing zeal  which,  in  ignorance  of  the  facts,  might  be  unfairly 
condemned  for  its  narrowness.  Still  there  was  much  of  that 
more  innocent  picturesque  merriment  which  is  never  wanting 
among  a  people  with  quick  animal  spirits  and  sensitive  organs  : 
there  was  not  the  heavy  sottishness  which  belongs  to  the 
thicker  northern  blood,  nor  the  stealthy  fierceness  which  in 
the  more  southern  regions  of  the  peninsula  makes  the  brawl 
lead  to  the  dagger-thrust. 

It  was  the  high  morning,  but  the  merry  spirits  of  the  Car- 
nival were  still  inclined  to  lounge  and  recapitulate  the  last 
night's  jests,  when  Tito  Melema  was  walking  at  a  brisk  pace 
on  the  way  to  the  Via  de'  Bardi.  Young  Bernardo  Dovizi,  who 
now  looks  at  us  out  of  Raphael's  portrait  as  the  keen-eyed 


180  ROMOLA. 

Cardinal  da  Bibbiena,  was  with  him ;  and  as  they  went,  they 
held  animated  talk  about  some  subject  that  had  evidently  no 
relation  to  the  sights  and  sounds  through  which  they  were 
pushing  their  way  along  the  Por'  Santa  Maria.  Nevertheless, 
as  they  discussed,  smiled,  and  gesticulated,  they  both,  from 
time  to  time,  cast  quick  glances  around  them,  and  at  the  turn- 
ing towards  the  Lung'  Arno,  leading  to  the  Ponte  Rubaconte, 
Tito  had  become  aware,  in  one  of  these  rapid  surveys,  that 
there  was  some  one  not  far  oft"  him  by  whom  he  very  much 
desired  not  to  be  recognized  at  that  moment.  His  time  and 
thoughts  were  thoroughly  pre-occupied,  for  he  was  looking  for- 
ward to  a  unique  occasion  in  his  life  :  he  was  preparing  for 
his  betrothal,  which  was  to  take  place  on  the  evening  of  this 
very  day.  The  ceremony  had  been  resolved  upon  rather  sud- 
denly ;  for  although  preparations  towards  the  marriage  had 
been  going  forward  for  some  time  —  chiefly  in  the  application 
of  Tito's  florins  to  the  fitting  up  of  rooms  in  Bardo's  dwelling, 
which,  the  library  excepted,  had  always  been  scantily  fur- 
nished—  it  had  been  intended  to  defer  both  the  betrothal  and 
the  marriage  until  after  Easter,  when  Tito's  year  of  proba- 
tion, insisted  on  by  Bernardo  del  Nero,  would  have  been  com- 
plete. But  when  an  express  proposition  had  come,  that  Tito 
should  follow  the  Cardinal  Giovanni  to  Rome  to  help  Ber- 
nardo Do  vizi  with  his  superior  knowledge  of  Greek  in  ar- 
ranging a  library,  and  there  was  no  possibility  of  declining 
what  lay  so  plainly  on  the  road  to  advancement,  he  had  become 
urgent  in  his  entreaties  that  the  betrothal  might  take  place 
before  his  departure  :  there  would  be  the  less  delay  before 
the  marriage  on  his  return,  and  it  would  be  less  painful  to 
part  if  he  and  Romola  were  outwardly  as  well  as  inwardly 
pledged  to  each  other —  if  he  had  a  claim  which  defied  Messer 
Bernardo  or  any  one  else  to  nullif}^  it.  For  the  betrothal,  at 
which  rings  were  exchanged  and  mutual  contracts  were  signed, 
made  more  than  half  the  legality  of  marriage,  to  be  completed 
on  a  separate  occasion  by  the  nuptial  benediction.  Romola's 
feeling  had  met  Tito's  in  this  wish,  and  the  consent  of  the 
elders  had  been  won. 

And  now  Tito  was  hastening,  amidst  arrangements  for  his 
departure  the  next  day,  to  snatch  a  morning  visit  to  Romola, 
to  say  and  hear  any  last  words  that  were  needful  to  be  said 
before  their  meeting  for  the  betrothal  in  the  evening.  It  was 
not  a  time  when  any  recognition  could  be  pleasant  that  was 
at  all  likely  to  detain  him ;  still  less  a  recognition  by  Tessa. 
And  it  was  unmistakably  Tessa  whom  he  had  caught  sight  of 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  BETROTHAL.  181 

moving  along,  with  a  timid  and  forlorn  look,  towards  that 
very  turn  of  the  Lung'  Arno  which  he  was  just  rounding. 
As  he  continued  his  talk  with  the  young  Dovizi,  he  had  an 
uncomfortable  undercurrent  of  consciousness  which  told  him 
that  Tessa  had  seen  him  and  would  certainly  follow  him : 
there  was  no  escaping  her  along  this  direct  road  by  the  Arno, 
and  over  the  Ponte  Rubaconte.  But  she  would  not  dare  to 
speak  to  him  or  approach  him  while  he  was  not  alone,  and  he 
would  continue  to  keep  Dovizi  with  him  till  they  reached 
Bardo's  door.  He  quickened  his  pace,  and  took  up  new 
threads  of  talk ;  but  all  the  while  the  sense  that  Tessa  was 
behind  him,  though  he  had  no  physical  evidence  of  the  fact, 
grew  stronger  and  stronger ;  it  was  very  irritating  —  perhaps 
all  the  more  so  because  a  certain  tenderness  and  pity  for  the 
poor  little  thing  made  the  determination  to  escape  without 
any  visible  notice  of  her,  a  not  altogether  agreeable  resource. 
Yet  Tito  persevered  and  carried  his  companion  to  the  door, 
cleverly  managing  his  ''addio"  without  turning  his  face  in  a 
direction  where  it  was  possible  for  him  to  see  an  importunate 
pair  of  blue  eyes ;  and  as  he  went  up  the  stone  steps,  he  tried 
to  get  rid  of  unpleasant  thoughts  by  saying  to  himself  that 
after  all  Tessa  might  not  have  seen  him,  or,  if  she  had,  might 
not  have  followed  him. 

But  —  perhaps  because  that  possibility  could  not  be  relied 
on  strongly  —  when  the  visit  was  over,  he  came  out  of  the 
doorway  with  a  quick  step  and  an  air  of  unconsciousness  as 
to  anything  that  might  be  on  his  right  hand  or  his  left.  Our 
eyes  are  so  constructed,  however,  that  they  take  in  a  wide 
angle  without  asking  any  leave  of  our  will ;  and  Tito  knew 
that  there  was  a  little  figure  in  a  white  hood  standing  near 
the  doorway  —  knew  it  quite  well,  before  he  felt  a  hand  laid 
on  his  arm.  It  was  a  real  grasp,  and  not  a  light,  timid  touch ; 
for  poor  Tessa,  seeing  his  rapid  step,  had  started  forward  with 
a  desperate  effort.  But  when  he  stopped  and  turned  towards 
her,  her  face  wore  a  frightened  look,  as  if  she  dreaded  the 
effect  of  her  boldness. 

"  Tessa !  "  said  Tito,  with  more  sharpness  in  his  voice  than 
she  had  ever  heard  in  it  before.  "  Why  are  you  here  ?  You 
must  not  follow  me  —  you  must  not  stand  about  door-places 
waiting  for  me." 

Her  blue  eyes  widened  with  tears,  and  she  said  nothing. 
Tito  was  afraid  of  something  worse  than  ridicule,  if  he  were 
seen  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi  with  a  girlish  contadina  looking 
pathetically  at  him.     It  was  a  street  of   high  silent-looking 


182  ROMOLA. 

dwellings,  not  of  traffic ;  but  Bernardo  del  Nero,  or  some  on*' 
almost  as  dangerous,  might  come  up  at  any  moment.  Even 
if  it  had  not  been  the  day  of  his  betrothal,  the  incident  would, 
have  been  awkward  and  annoying.  Yet  it  would  be  brutal  — 
it  was  impossible — to  drive  Tessa  away  with  harsh  words. 
That  accursed  folly  of  his  with  the  cerretano  —  that  it  should 
have  lain  buried  in  a  quiet  way  for  months,  and  now  start  up 
before  him  as  this  unseasonable  crop  of  vexation !  He  could 
not  speak  harshly,  but  he  spoke  hurriedly. 

"Tessa,  I  cannot  —  must  not  talk  to  you  here.  I  will  go 
on  to  the  bridge  and  wait  for  you  there.     Follow  me  slowly." 

He  turned  and  walked  fast  to  the  Ponte  Rubaconte,  and 
there  leaned  against  the  wall  of  one  of  the  quaint  little  houses 
that  rise  at  even  distances  on  the  bridge,  looking  towards  the 
way  by  which  Tessa  would  come.  It  would  have  softened  a 
much  harder  heart  than  Tito's  to  see  the  little  thing  advanciug 
with  her  round  face  much  paled  and  saddened  since  he  had 
parted  from  it  at  the  door  of  the  "  Nunziata."  Happily  it 
was  the  least  frequented  of  the  bridges,  and  there  were 
scarcely  any  passengers  on  it  at  this  moment.  He  lost  no 
time  in  speaking  as  soon  as  she  came  near  him. 

"  jSCow,  Tessa,  I  have  very  little  time.  You  must  not  cry. 
Why  did  you  follow  me  this  morning  ?  You  must  not  do  so 
again." 

"  I  thought,"  said  Tessa,  speaking  in  a  whisper,  and  strug- 
gling against  a  sob  that  would  rise  immediately  at  this  new 
voice  of  Tito's  —  "I  thought  you  wouldn't  be  so  long  before 
you  came  to  take  care  of  me  again.  And  the  patrlgno  beats 
me,  and  I  can't  bear  it  any  longer.  And  always  when  I  come 
for  a  holiday  I  walk  about  to  find  you,  and  I  can't.  Oh,  please 
don't  send  me  away  from  you  again  !  It  has  been  so  long,  and 
I  cry  so  now,  because  you  never  come  to  me.  I  can't  help  it, 
for  the  days  are  so  long,  and  I  don't  mind  about  the  goats  and 
kids,  or  anything  —  and  I  can't "  — 

The  sobs  came  fast  now,  and  the  great  tears.  Tito  felt  that 
he  could  not  do  otherwise  than  comfort  her.  Send  her  away 
—  yes  ;  that  he  must  do,  at  once.  But  it  was  all  the  more 
impossible  to  tell  her  anything  that  would  leave  her  in  a  state 
of  hopeless  grief.  He  saw  new  trouble  in  the  background, 
but  the  difficulty  of  the  moment  was  too  pressing  for  him  to 
weigh  distant  consequences. 

"Tessa,  my  little  one,"  he  said,  in  his  old  caressing  tones, 
"you  must  not  cry.  Bear  with  the  cross  patrigno  a  little 
longer.     I   will  come  back  to  you.     But  I'm  going  now  to 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  BETROTHAL.  183 

Rome  —  a  long,  long  way  off.  I  shall  come  back  in  a  few 
weeks,  and  then  I  promise  you  to  come  and  see  you.  Promise 
me  to  be  good  and  wait  for  me." 

It  was  the  well-remembered  voice  again,  and  the  mere 
sound  was  half  enough  to  soothe  Tessa.  She  looked  up  at 
him  with  trusting  eyes,  that  still  glittered  with  tears,  sobbing 
all  the  while,  in  spite  of  her  utmost  efforts  to  obey  him. 
Again  he  said,  in  a  gentle  voice,  — 

"  Promise  me,  my  Tessa." 

"  Yes,"  she  whispered.     "  But  you  won't  be  long  ?  " 

"■  No,  not  long.  But  I  must  go  now.  And  remember  what 
I  told  you,  Tessa.  Kobody  must  know  that  you  ever  see  me, 
else  you  will  lose  me  forever.  And  now,  when  I  have  left 
you,  go  straight  home,  and  never  follow  me  again.  Wait  till 
I  come  to  you.     Good-by,  my  little  Tessa :  I  will  come." 

There  was  no  help  for  it ;  he  must  turn  and  leave  her  with- 
out looking  behind  him  to  see  how  she  bore  it,  for  he  had  no 
time  to  spare.  When  he  did  look  round  he  was  in  the  Via  de' 
Benci,  where  there  was  no  seeing  what  was  happening  on  the 
bridge ;  but  Tessa  was  too  trusting  and  obedient  not  to  do 
just  what  he  had  told  her. 

Yes,  the  difficulty  was  at  an  end  for  that  day;  yet  this 
return  of  Tessa  to  him,  at  a  moment  when  it  was  impossible 
for  him  to  put  an  end  to  all  difficulty  with  her  by  undeceiving 
her,  was  an  unpleasant  incident  to  carry  in  his  memory.  But 
Tito's  mind  was  just  now  thoroughly  penetrated  with  a  hope- 
ful first  love,  associated  with  all  happy  prospects  flattering  to 
his  ambition ;  and  that  future  necessity  of  grieving  Tessa 
could  be  scarcely  more  to  him  than  the  far-off  cry  of  some 
little  suffering  animal  buried  in  the  thicket,  to  a  merry  caval- 
cade in  the  sunny  plain.  When,  for  the  second  time  that  day, 
Tito  was  hastening  across  the  Ponte  Rubaconte,  the  thought 
of  Tessa  caused  no  perceptible  diminution  of  his  happiness. 
He  was  well  muffled  in  his  mantle,  less,  perhaps,  to  protect 
him  from  the  cold  than  from  the  additional  notice  that  would 
have  been  drawn  upon  him  by  his  dainty  apparel.  He  leaped 
up  the  stone  steps  by  two  at  a  time,  and  said  hurriedly  to 
Maso,  who  met  him,  — 

''  Where  is  the  damigella  ?  " 

"In  the  library;  she  is  quite  ready,  and  Monna  Brigida 
and  Messer  Bernardo  are  already  there  with  Ser  Braccio,  but 
none  of  the  rest  of  the  company." 

''  Ask  her  to  give  me  a  few  minutes  alone  ;  I  will  await  her 
in  the  salotto.'^ 


184  ROMOLA. 

Tito  entered  a  room  which  had  been  fitted  up  in  the  utmost 

contrast  with  the  half-pallid,  half-sombre  tints  of  the  library. 
The  walls  were  brightly  frescoed  with  "  caprices  "  of  nymphs 
and  loves  sporting  under  the  blue  among  flowers  and  birds. 
The  only  furniture  besides  the  red  leather  seats  and  the  cen- 
tral table  were  two  tall  white  vases,  and  a  young  faun  playing 
the  flute,  modelled  by  a  promising  youth  named  Michelangelo 
Buonarotti.  It  was  a  room  that  gave  a  sense  of  being  in  the 
sunny  open  air. 

Tito  kept  his  mantle  round  him,  and  looked  towards  the 
door.  It  was  not  long  before  Romola  entered,  all  white  and 
gold,  more  than  ever  like  a  tall  lily.  Her  white  silk  garment 
was  bound  by  a  golden  girdle,  which  fell  with  large  tassels ; 
and  above  that  was  the  rippling  gold  of  her  hair,  surmounted 
by  the  white  mist  of  her  long  veil,  which  was  fastened  on  her 
brow  by  a  band  of  pearls,  the  gift  of  Bernardo  del  Nero,  and 
was  now  parted  off  her  face  so  that  it  all  floated  backward. 

"  Regina  mia  ! "  said  Tito,  as  he  took  her  hand  and  kissed 
it,  still  keeping  his  mantle  round  him.  He  could  not  help 
going  backward  to  look  at  her  again,  while  she  stood  in  calm 
delight,  with  that  exquisite  self-consciousness  which  rises 
under  the  gaze  of  admiring  love. 

"  Romola,  will  you  show  me  the  next  room  now  ? "  said 
Tito,  checking  himself  with  the  remembrance  that  the  time 
might  be  short.  "  You  said  I  should  see  it  when  you  had 
arranged  everything." 

Without  speaking,  she  led  the  way  into  a  long,  narrow 
room,  painted  brightly  like  the  other,  but  only  with  birds  and 
flowers.  The  furniture  in  it  was  all  old ;  there  were  old 
faded  objects  for  feminine  use  or  ornament,  arranged  in  an 
open  cabinet  between  the  two  narrow  Avindows  ;  above  the 
cabinet  was  the  portrait  of  Romola's  mother ;  and  below  this, 
on  the  top  of  the  cabinet,  stood  the  crucifix  which  Romola 
had  brought  from  San  Marco. 

"  I  have  brought  something  under  my  mantle,"  said  Tito, 
smiling ;  and  throwing  off  the  large  loose  garment,  he  showed 
the  little  tabernacle  which  had  been  painted  by  Piero  di 
Cosimo.  The  painter  had  carried  out  Tito's  intention  charm^ 
ingly,  and  so  far  had  atoned  for  his  long  delay.  "  Do  you 
know  what  this  is  for,  my  Romola  ?  "  added  Tito,  taking  her  by 
the  hand,  and  leading  her  towards  the  cabinet.  "  It  is  a  little 
shrine,  which  is  to  hide  away  from  you  forever  that  remem- 
brancer of  sadness.  You  have  done  with  sadness  now  ;  and  we 
will  bury  all  images  of  it  —  bury  them  in  a  tomb  of  joy.    See  I " 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  BETROTHAL.  185 

A  slight  quiver  passed  across  Romola's  face  as  Tito  took 
hold  of  the  crucifix.  But  she  had  no  wish  to  prevent  his 
purpose  ;  on  the  contrary,  she  herself  wished  to  subdue  cer- 
tain importunate  memories  and  questionings  which  still 
flitted  like  unexplained  shadows  across  her  happier  thought. 

He  opened  the  triptych  and  placed  the  crucifix  within  the 
central  space ;  then  closing  it  again,  taking  out  the  key,  and 
setting  the  little  tabernacle  in  the  spot  where  the  crucifix 
had  stood,  said,  — 

"  Now,  Romola,  look  and  see  if  you  are  satisfied  with  the 
portraits  old  Piero  has  made  of  us.  Is  it  not  a  dainty  device  ? 
and  the  credit  of  choosing  it  is  mine." 

"  Ah  !  it  is  you  —  it  is  perfect !  "  said  Romola,  looking  with 
moist  joyful  eyes  at  the  miniature  Bacchus,  with  his  purple 
clusters.  "And  I  am  Ariadne,  and  you  are  crowning  me! 
Yes,  it  is  true,  Tito  ;  you  have  crowned  my  poor  life." 

They  held  each  other's  hands  while  she  spoke,  and  both 
looked  at  their  imaged  selves.  But  the  reality  was  far  more 
beautiful ;  she  all  lily-white  and  golden,  and  he  with  his  dark 
glowing  beauty  above  the  pvirple  red-bordered  tunic. 

"And  it  was  our  good  strange  Piero  Avho  painted  it?"  said 
Eomola.  "Did  you  put  it  into  his  head  to  paint  me  as 
Antigone,  that  he  might  have  my  likeness  for  this  ?  " 

"  No,  it  was  he  who  made  my  getting  leave  for  him  to  paint 
you  and  your  father,  a  condition  of  his  doing  this  for  me." 

"  Ah !  I  see  now  what  it  was  you  gave  up  your  precious 
ring  for.  I  perceived  you  had  some  cunning  plan  to  give  me 
pleasure." 

Tito  did  not  blench.  Eomola's  little  illusions  about  himself 
had  long  ceased  to  cause  him  anything  but  satisfaction.  He 
only  smiled  and  said,  — 

"  I  might  have  spared  my  ring ;  Piero  will  accept  no  money 
from  me  ;  he  thinks  himself  paid  by  painting  jo\x.  And  now, 
while  I  am  away,  you  will  look  every  day  at  those  pretty 
symbols  of  our  life  together  —  the  ship  on  the  calm  sea,  and 
the  ivy  that  never  withers,  and  those  Loves  that  have  left  off 
wounding  us  and  shower  soft  petals  that  are  like  our  kisses  ; 
and  the  leopards  and  tigers,  they  are  the  troubles  of  yowx  life 
that  are  all  quelled  now ;  and  the  strange  sea-monsters,  with 
their  merry  eyes  —  let  us  see  —  they  are  the  dull  passages  in 
the  heavy  books,  which  have  begun  to  be  amusing  since  we 
have  sat  by  each  other." 

"  Tito  mio  ! "  said  Eomola,  in  a  half-laughing  voice  of  love  ; 
"  but  you  will  give  me  the  key  ?  "  she  added,  holding  out  her 
hand  for  it. 


186  ROMOLA. 

"  Not  at  all ! "  said  Tito,  with  playful  decision,  opening  his 
scaisella,  and  dropping  in  the  little  key.  "  I  shall  drown  it  in 
the  Arno." 

"  But  if  I  ever  wanted  to  look  at  the  crucifix  again  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  for  that  very  reason  it  is  hidden  —  hidden  by  these 
images  of  youth  and  joy." 

He  pressed  a  light  kiss  on  her  brow,  and  she  said  no  more, 
ready  to  submit,  like  all  strong  souls,  when  she  felt  no  valid 
reason  for  resistance. 

And  then  they  joined  the  waiting  company,  which  made  a 
dignified  little  procession  as  it  passed  along  the  Ponte  Ruba- 
conte  towards  Santa  Croce.  Slowly  it  passed,  for  Bardo,  un- 
accustomed for  years  to  leave  his  own  house,  walked  with  a 
more  timid  step  than  usual ;  and  that  slow  pace  suited  well 
with  the  gouty  dignity  of  Messer  Bartolommeo  Scala,  who 
graced  the  occasion  by  his  presence,  along  with  his  daughter 
Alessandra.  It  was  customary  to  have  very  long  troops  of 
kindred  and  friends  at  the  sposaUzlo,  or  betrothal,  and  it  had 
even  been  found  necessary  in  time  past  to  limit  the  number 
by  law  to  no  more  than  four  hundred  —  two  hundred  on  each 
side ;  for  since  the  guests  were  all  feasted  after  this  initial 
ceremony,  as  well  as  after  the  nozze,  or  marriage,  the  very 
first  stage  of  matrimony  had  become  a  ruinous  expense,  as 
that  scholarly  Benedict,  Leonardo  Bruno,  complained  in  his 
own  case.  But  Bardo,  who  in  his  poverty  had  kept  himself 
proudly  free  from  any  appearance  of  claiming  the  advantages 
attached  to  a  powerful  family  name,  would  have  no  invitations 
given  on  the  strength  of  mere  friendship ;  and  the  modest 
procession  of  twenty  that  followed  the  sjjosi  were,  with  three 
or  four  exceptions,  friends  of  Bardo's  and  Tito's  selected  on 
personal  grounds. 

Bernardo  del  Nero  walked  as  a  vanguard  before  Bardo,  who 
was  led  on  the  right  by  Tito,  while  Romola  held  her  father's 
other  hand.  Bardo  had  himself  been  married  at  Santa  Croce, 
and  had  insisted  on  Romola's  being  betrothed  and  married 
there,  rather  than  in  the  little  church  at  Santa  Lucia  close  by 
their  house,  because  he  had  a  complete  mental  vision  of  the 
grand  church,  where  he  hoped  that  a  burial  might  be  granted  him 
among  the  Florentines  who  had  deserved  well.  Happily  the 
way  was  short  and  direct,  and  lay  aloof  from  the  loudest  riot 
of  the  Carnival,  if  only  they  could  return  before  any  dances  or 
shows  began  in  the  great  piazza  of  Santa  Croce.  The  west 
was  red  as  they  passed  the  bridge,  and  shed  a  mellow  light  on 
the  pretty  procession,  which  had  a  touch  of  solemnity  in  the 


THE  DAY  OF  THE  BETROTHAL.  187 

presence  of  the  blind  father.  But  when  the  ceremony  was 
over,  and  Tito  and  Romola  came  out  on  to  the  broad  steps  of 
the  church,  with  the  golden  links  of  destiny  on  their  fingers, 
the  evening  had  deepened  into  struggling  starlight,  and  the 
servants  had  their  torches  lit. 

While  the}^  came  out,  a  strange,  dreary  chant,  as  of  a 
Miserere,  met  their  ears,  and  they  saw  that  at  the  extreme  end 
of  the  piazza  there  seemed  to  be  a  stream  of  people  impelled 
by  something  approaching  from  the  Borgo  de'  Greci. 

*'It  is  one  of  their  masked  processions,  I  suppose,"  said 
Tito,  who  was  now  alone  witli  Romola,  while  Bernardo  took 
charge  of  Bardo. 

And  as  he  spoke  there  came  slowly  into  view,  at  a  height 
far  above  the  heads  of  the  on-lookers,  a  huge  and  ghastly 
image  of  Winged  Time  with  his  scythe  and  hour-glass, 
surrounded  by  his  winged  children,  the  Hours.  He  was 
mounted  on  a  high  car  completely  covered  with  black,  and  the 
bullocks  that  drew  the  car  were  also  covered  with  black,  their 
horns  alone  standing  out  white  above  the  gloom ;  so  that  in 
the  sombre  shadow  of  the  houses  it  seemed  to  those  at  a 
distance  as  if  Time  and  his  children  were  apparitions  floating 
through  the  air.  And  behind  them  came  what  looked  like  a 
troop  of  the  sheeted  dead  gliding  above  blackness.  And  as 
they  glided  slowly,  they  chanted  in  a  wailing  strain. 

A  cold  horror  seized  on  Romola,  for  at  the  first  moment  it 
seemed  as  if  her  brother's  vision,  which  could  never  be 
effaced  from  her  mind,  was  being  half  fulfilled.  She  clung  to 
Tito,  who,  divining  what  was  in  her  thoughts,  said,  — 

"  What  dismal  fooling  sometimes  pleases  your  Florentines ! 
Doubtless  this  is  an  invention  of  Piero  di  Cosimo,  who  loves 
such  grim  merri'jaent." 

"  Tito.  \  wish  it  had  not  happened.  It  will  deepen  the 
images  of  that  vision  which  I  would  fain  be  rid  of." 

"Xay,  Romola,  you  will  look  only  at  the  images  of  our 
happiness  now.     I  have  locked  all  sadness  away  from  you." 

"  But  it  is  still  there  —  it  is  only  hidden,"  said  Romola,  in  a 
low  tone,  hardly  conscious  that  she  sj)oke. 

'•  See,  they  are  all  gone  now  !  "  said  Tito.  ''  You  will  forget 
this  ghastly  mummery  when  we  are  in  the  light,  and  can  see 
each  other's  eyes.  My  Ariadne  must  never  look  backward 
now  —  only  forward  to  Easter,  when  she  will  triumph  with 
her  Care-dispeller." 


BOOK    II. 

CHAPTER   XXI. 

FLORENCE    EXPECTS    A    GUEST. 

It  was  the  17th  of  November,  1494 :  more  than  eighteen 
months  since  Tito  and  Romola  had  been  finally  united  in  the 
joyous  Easter  time,  and  had  had  a  rainbow-tinted  shower  of 
comfits  thrown  over  them,  after  the  ancient  Greek  fashion,  in 
token  that  the  heavens  would  shower  sweets  on  them  through 
all  their  double  life. 

Since  that  Easter  a  great  change  had  come  over  the  pros- 
pects of  Florence  ;  and  as  in  the  tree  that  bears  a  myriad 
of  blossoms,  each  single  bud  with  its  fruit  is  dependent  on  the 
primary  circulation  of  the  sap,  so  the  fortunes  of  Tito  and 
Romola  were  dependent  on  certain  grand  political  and  social 
conditions  which  made  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  Italy. 

In  this  very  November,  little  more  than  a  week  ago,  the 
spirit  of  the  old  centuries  seemed  to  have  re-entered  the  breasts 
of  Florentines.  The  great  bell  in  the  palace  tower  had  rung 
out  the  hammer  sound  of  alarm,  and  the  people  had  mustered 
with  their  rusty  arms,  their  tools  and  impromptu  cudgels,  to 
drive  out  the  Medici.  The  gate  of  San  Gallo  had  been  fairly 
shut  on  the  arrogant,  exasperating  Piero,  galloping  away 
towards  Bologna  with  his  hired  horsemen  frightened  behind 
him,  and  shut  on  his  keener  young  brother,  the  cardinal,  escap- 
ing in  the  disguise  of  a  Franciscan  monk :  a  price  had  been  set 
on  both  their  heads.  After  that,  there  had  been  some  sacking 
of  houses,  according  to  old  precedent ;  the  ignominious  images, 
painted  on  the  public  buildings,  of  the  men  who  had  conspired 
against  the  Medici  in  days  gone  by,  were  effaced ;  the  exiled 
enemies  of  the  Medici  were  invited  home.  The  half-fledged 
tyrants  were  fairly  out  of  their  splendid  nest  in  the  Via 
Larga,  and  the  Republic  had  recovered  the  use  of  its  will 
again. 

But   now,  a  week  later,  the  great  palace  in  tlie  Via   Larga 


FLORENCE  EXPECTS  A    GUEST.  189 

had  been  prepared  for  the  reception  of  another  tenant ;  and  if 
drapery  roofing  the  streets  with  unwonted  color,  if  banners  and 
hangings  pouring  out  of  the  windows,  if  carpets  and  tapestry 
stretched  over  all  steps  and  pavement  on  which  exceptional 
feet  might  tread,  were  an  unquestionable  proof  of  joy,  Florence 
was  very  joyful  in  the  expectation  of  its  new  guest.  The 
stream  of  color  flowed  from  the  palace  in  the  Via  Larga  round 
by  the  Cathedral,  then  by  the  great  Piazza  della  Signoria,  and 
across  the  Ponte  Vecchio  to  the  Porta  San  Frediano  —  the  gate 
that  looks  towards  Pisa.  There,  near  the  gate,  a  platform  and 
canopy  had  been  erected  for  the  Signoria ;  and  Messer  Luca 
Corsini,  doctor  of  law,  felt  his  heart  palpitating  a  little  with 
the  sense  that  he  had  a  Latin  oration  to  read  ;  and  every  chief 
elder  in  Florence  had  to  make  himself  ready,  with  smooth  chin 
and  well-lined  silk  lucco,  to  walk  in  procession ;  and  the  well- 
born youths  were  looking  at  their  rich  new  tunics  after  the 
French  mode  which  was  to  impress  the  stranger  as  having  a 
peculiar  grace  when  worn  by  Florentines  ;  and  a  large  body  of 
the  clergy,  from  the  archbishop  in  his  effulgence  to  the  train 
of  monks,  black,  white,  and  gray,  were  consulting  betimes  in 
the  morning  how  they  should  marshal  themselves,  with  their 
burden  of  relics  and  sacred  banners  and  consecrated  jewels, 
that  their  movements  might  be  adjusted  to  the  expected 
arrival  of  the  illustrious  visitor,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon. 

An  unexampled  visitor !  For  he  had  come  through  the  passes 
of  the  Alps  with  such  an  army  as  Italy  had  not  seen  before  : 
with  thousands  of  terrible  Swiss,  well  used  to  fight  for  love  and 
hatred  as  well  as  for  hire ;  with  a  host  of  gallant  cavaliers 
proud  of  a  name ;  with  an  unprecedented  infantry,  in  which 
every  man  in  a  hundred  carried  an  arquebus ;  nay,  with  can- 
non of  bronze,  shooting  not  stones  but  iron  balls,  drawn  not  by 
bullocks  but  by  horses,  and  capable  of  firing  a  second  time  be- 
fore a  city  could  mend  the  breach  made  by  the  first  ball. 
Some  compared  the  new-comer  to  Charlemagne,  reputed  re- 
builder  of  Florence,  welcome  conqueror  of  degenerate  kings, 
regulator  and  benefactor  of  the  Church  ;  some  preferred  the 
comparison  to  Cyrus,  liberator  of  the  chosen  people,  restorer 
of  the  Temple.  For  he  had  come  across  the  Alps  with  the 
most  glorious  projects :  he  was  to  march  through  Italy  amidst 
the  jubilees  of  a  grateful  and  admiring  people  ;  he  was  to  sat- 
isfy all  conflicting  complaints  at  Rome :  he  was  to  take  pos- 
session, by  virtue  of  hereditary  right  and  a  little  fighting,  of 
the  kingdom  of  Naples  ;  and  from  that  convenient  starting- 


190  ROMOLA. 

point  lie  was  to  set  out  on  the  conquest  of  the  Turks,  who  were 
partly  to  be  cut  to  pieces  and  partly  converted  to  the  faith  of 
Christ.  It  was  a  scheme  that  seemed  to  befit  the  Most  Chris- 
tian King,  head  of  a  nation  Avhich,  thanks  to  the  devices  of  a 
subtle  Louis  the  Eleventh  who  had  died  in  much  fright  as  to 
his  personal  prospects  ten  years  before,  had  become  the  strong- 
est of  Christian  monarchies  ;  and  this  antitype  of  Cyrus  and 
Charlemagne  was  no  other  than  the  son  of  that  subtle  Louis  — 
the  young  Charles  the  Eighth,  son  of  France. 

Surely,  on  a  general  statement,  hardly  anything  could  seem 
more  grandiose,  or  fitter  to  revive  in  the  breasts  of  men  the 
memory  of  great  dispensations  by  which  new  strata  had  been 
laid  in  the  history  of  mankind.  And  there  was  a  very  widely 
spread  conviction  that  the  advent  of  the  French  king  and  his 
army  into  Italy  was  one  of  those  events  at  which  marble  stat- 
ues might  well  be  believed  to  perspire,  phantasmal  fiery  war- 
riors to  fight  in  the  air,  and  quadrupeds  to  bring  forth  mon- 
strous births  —  that  it  did  not  belong  to  the  usual  order  of 
Providence,  but  was  in  a  peculiar  sense  the  work  of  God.  It 
was  a  conviction  that  rested  less  on  the  necessarily  momentous 
character  of  a  powerful  foreign  invasion  than  on  certain  moral 
emotions  to  which  the  aspect  of  the  times  gave  the  form  of 
presentiments :  emotions  Avhich  had  found  a  very  remarkable 
utterance  in  the  voice  of  a  single  man. 

That  man  was  Era  Girolamo  Savonarola,  Prior  of  the 
Dominican  convent  of  San  Marco  in  Florence.  On  a  Septem- 
ber morning,  when  men's  ears  were  ringing  with  the  news 
that  the  French  army  had  entered  Italy,  he  had  preached  in 
the  Cathedral  of  Florence  from  the  text,  "  Behold  I,  even  I, 
do  bring  a  flood  of  waters  upon  the  earth."  He  believed  it 
was  by  supreme  guidance  that  he  had  reached  just  so  far  in 
his  exposition  of  Genesis  the  previous  Lent ;  and  he  believed 
the  "  flood  of  water  "  —  emblem  at  once  of  avenging  wrath 
and  purifying  mercy  —  to  be  the  divinely  indicated  symbol  of 
the  French  army.  His  audience,  some  of  whom  were  held  to 
be  among  the  choicest  spirits  of  the  age  —  the  most  cultivated 
men  in  the  most  cultivated  of  Italian  cities  —  believed  it  too, 
and  listened  with  shuddering  awe.  For  this  man  had  a 
power  rarely  paralleled,  of  impressing  his  beliefs  on  others, 
and  of  swaying  very  various  minds.  And  as  long  as  four 
years  ago  he  had  proclaimed  from  the  chief  pulpit  in  Florence 
that  a  scourge  was  about  to  descend  on  Italy,  and  that  by  this 
scourge  the  Church  was  to  be  purified.  Savonarola  appeared 
to  believe,  and  his  hearers  more  or  less  waveringly  believed, 


FLORENCE  EXPECTS  A    GUEST.  191 

that  he  had  a  mission  like  that  of  the  Hebrew  prophets,  and 
that  the  Florentines  amongst  whom  his  message  was 
delivered  were  in  some  sense  a  second  chosen  people.  The 
idea  of  prophetic  gifts  was  not  a  remote  one  in  that  age  :  seers 
of  visions,  circumstantial  heralds  of  things  to  be,  were  fai 
from  uncommon  either  outside  or  inside  the  cloister ;  but  this 
very  fact  made  Savonarola  stand  out  the  more  conspicuously 
as  a  grand  exception.  While  in  others  the  gift  of  prophecy 
was  very  much  like  a  farthing  candle  illuminating  small 
corners  of  human  destiny  with  prophetic  gossip,  in  Savonarola 
it  was  like  a  mighty  beacon  shining  far  out  for  the  warning 
and  guidance  of  men.  And  to  some  of  the  soberest  minds 
the  supernatural  character  of  his  insight  into  the  future 
gathered  a  strong  attestation  from  the  peculiar  conditions  of 
the  age. 

At  the  close  of  1492,  the  year  in  which  Lorenzo  de'  Medici 
died  and  Tito  Melema  came  as  a  wanderer  to  Florence,  Italy 
was  enjoying  a  peace  and  prosperity  unthreatened  by  any 
near  and  definite  danger.  There  was  no  fear  of  famine,  for 
the  seasons  had  been  plenteous  in  corn,  and  wine,  and  oil ; 
new  palaces  had  been  rising  in  all  fair  cities,  new  villas  on 
pleasant  slopes  and  summits ;  and  the  men  who  had  more 
than  their  share  of  these  good  things  were  in  no  fear  of  the 
larger  number  who  had  less.  For  the  citizens'  armor  was 
getting  rusty,  and  populations  seemed  to  have  become  tame, 
licking  the  hands  of  masters  who  paid  for  a  ready-made  army 
when  they  wanted  it,  as  they  paid  for  goods  of  Smyrna. 
Even  the  fear  of  the  Turk  had  ceased  to  be  active,  and  the 
Pope  found  it  more  immediately  profitable  to  accept  bribes 
from  him  for  a  little  prospective  poisoning  than  to  form  plans 
either  for  conquering  or  for  converting  him. 

Altogether  this  world,  with  its  partitioned  empire  and  its 
roomy  universal  Church,  seemed  to  be  a  handsome  establish- 
ment for  the  few  who  were  lucky  or  wise  enough  to  reap  the 
advantages  of  human  folly :  a  world  in  which  lust  and  obscen- 
ity, lying  and  treachery,  oppression  and  murder,  were  pleasant, 
useful,  and  when  properly  managed,  not  dangerous.  And  as 
a  sort  of  fringe  or  adornment  to  the  substantial  delights  of 
tyranny,  avarice,  and  lasciviousness,  there  was  the  patronage 
of  polite  learning  and  the  fine  arts,  so  that  flattery  could 
always  be  had  in  the  choicest  Latin  to  be  commanded  at  that 
time,  and  sublime  artists  were  at  hand  to  paint  the  holy  and 
the  unclean  with  impartial  skill.  The  Church,  it  was  said, 
had  never  been  so  disgraced  in  its  head,  had  never  shown  so 


192  ROMOLA. 

few  signs  of  renovating,  vital  belief  in  its  lower  members ; 
nevertheless  it  was  much  more  prosperous  than  in  some  past 
days.  The  heavens  were  fair  and  smiling  above ;  and  below 
there  were  no  signs  of  earthquake. 

Yet  at  that  time,  as  we  have  seen,  there  was  a  man  in 
Florence  who  for  two  years  and  more  had  been  preaching  that 
a  scourge  was  at  hand;  that  the  world  was  certainly  not 
framed  for  the  lasting  convenience  of  hypocrites,  libertines, 
and  oppressors.  From  the  midst  of  those  smiling  heavens  he 
had  seen  a  sword  hanging  —  the  sword  of  God's  justice  — 
which  was  speedily  to  descend  with  purifying  punishment  on 
the  Church  and  the  world.  In  brilliant  Ferrara,  seventeen 
years  before,  the  contradiction  between  men's  lives  and  their 
professional  beliefs  had  pressed  upon  him  with  a  force  that 
had  been  enough  to  destroy  his  appetite  for  the  world,  and  at 
the  age  of  twenty-three  had  driven  him  into  the  cloister.  He 
believed  that  God  had  committed  to  the  Church  the  sacred 
lamp  of  truth  for  the  guidance  and  salvation  of  men,  and  he 
saw  that  the  Church,  in  its  corruption,  had  become  a  sepulchre 
to  hide  the  lamp.  As  the  years  went  on,  scandals  increased 
and  multiplied,  and  hypocrisy  seemed  to  have  given  place  to 
impudence.  Had  the  world,  then,  ceased  to  have  a  righteous 
Ruler  ?  Was  the  Church  finally  forsaken  ?  No,  assuredly  : 
in  the  Sacred  Book  there  was  a  record  of  the  past  in  which 
might  be  seen  as  in  a  glass  what  would  be  in  the  days  to  come, 
and  the  book  showed  that  when  the  wickedness  of  the  chosen 
people,  type  of  the  Christian  Church,  had  become  crying,  the 
judgments  of  God  had  descended  on  them.  Nay,  reason 
itself  declared  that  vengeance  was  imminent,  for  what  else 
would  suffice  to  turn  men  from  their  obstinacy  in  evil  ?  And 
unless  the  Church  were  reclaimed,  how  could  the  promises  be 
fulfilled,  that  the  heathens  should  be  converted  and  the  whole 
world  become  subject  to  the  one  true  law  ?  He  had  seen  his 
belief  reflected  in  visions  —  a  mode  of  seeing  which  had  been 
frequent  with  him  from  his  youth  up. 

But  the  real  force  of  demonstration  for  Girolamo  Savonarola 
lay  in  his  own  burning  indignation  at  the  sight  of  wrong  ;  in 
his  fervent  belief  in  an  Unseen  Justice  that  would  put  an  end 
to  the  wrong,  and  in  an  Unseen  Purity  to  which  lying  and 
uncleanness  were  an  abomination.  To  his  ardent,  power- 
loving  soul,  believing  in  great  ends,  and  longing  to  achieve 
those  ends  by  the  exertion  of  its  own  strong  will,  the  faith  in 
a  supreme  and  righteous  liuUn-  became  one  witli  the  faitli  in  a 
speedy  divine  interposition  tliat  would  punish  and  reclaim. 


FLORENCE  EXPECTS  A    GUEST.  193 

Meanwhile,  under  that  splendid  masquerade  of  dignities 
sacred  and  secular  which  seemed  to  make  the  life  of  lucky- 
Churchmen  and  princely  families  so  luxurious  and  amusing, 
there  were  certain  conditions  at  work  which  slowly  tended  to 
disturb  the  general  festivity.  Ludovico  Sforza  —  copious  in 
gallantry,  splendid  patron  of  an  incomparable  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  —  holding  the  ducal  crown  of  Milan  in  his  grasp,  and 
wanting  to  put  it  on  his  own  head  rather  than  let  it  rest  on 
that  of  a  feeble  nephew  who  would  take  very  little  to  poison 
him,  was  much  afraid  of  the  Spanish-born  old  King  Ferdinand 
and  the  Crown  Prince  Alfonso  of  Naples,  who,  not  liking 
cruelty  and  treachery  which  were  useless  to  themselves, 
objected  to  the  poisoning  of  a  near  relative  for  the  advantage 
of  a  Lombard  usurper ;  the  royalties  of  Naples  again  were 
afraid  of  their  suzerain.  Pope  Alexander  Borgia;  all  three 
were  anxiously  watching  Florence,  lest  with  its  midway 
territory  it  should  determine  the  game  by  underhand  backing  ; 
and  all  four,  with  every  small  state  in  Italy,  were  afraid  of 
Venice  —  Venice  the  cautious,  the  stable,  and  the  strong,  that 
wanted  to  stretch  its  arms  not  only  along  both  sides  of  the 
Adriatic  but  across  to  the  ports  of  the  western  coast. 

Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  it  was  thought,  did  much  to  prevent 
the  fatal  outbreak  of  such  jealousies,  keeping  up  the  old 
Florentine  alliance  with  Naples  and  the  Pope,  and  yet  per- 
suading Milan  that  the  alliance  was  for  the  general  advantage. 
But  young  Piero  de'  Medici's  rash  vanity  had  quickly  nullified 
the  effect  of  his  father's  wary  policy,  and  Ludovico  Sforza, 
roused  to  suspicion  of  a  league  against  him,  thought  of  a 
move  which  would  checkmate  his  adversaries  :  he  determined 
to  invite  the  French  king  to  march  into  Italy,  and,  as  heir  of 
the  house  of  Anjou,  take  possession  of  Naples.  Ambassadors 
—  "  orators,"  as  they  were  called  in  those  haranguing  times  — 
went  and  came ;  a  recusant  cardinal,  determined  not  to 
acknowledge  a  Pope  elected  by  bribery  (and  his  own  particular 
enemy),  went  and  came  also,  and  seconded  the  invitation  with 
hot  rhetoric  ;  and  the  young  king  seemed  to  lend  a  willing 
ear.  So  that  in  1493  the  rumor  spread  and  became  louder  and 
louder  that  Charles  the  Eighth  of  France  was  about  to  cross 
the  Alps  with  a  mighty  army  ;  and  the  Italian  populations, 
accustomed,  since  Italy  had  ceased  to  be  the  heart  of  the 
Roman  empire,  to  look  for  an  arbitrator  from  afar,  began 
vaguely  to  regard  his  coming  as  a  means  of  avenging  their 
wrongs  and  redressing  their  grievances. 

And  in  that  rumor  Savonarola  had  heard  the  assurance  that 


194  ROMOLA. 

his  prophecy  was  being  verified.  What  was  it  that  filled  the 
ears  of  the  prophets  of  old  but  the  distant  tread  of  foreign 
armies,  coming  to  do  the  work  of  justice  ?  He  no  longer 
looked  vaguely  to  the  horizon  for  the  coming  storm :  he 
pointed  to  the  rising  cloud.  The  French  army  was  that  new 
deluge  which  was  to  purify  the  earth  from  iniquity  ;  the 
French  king,  Charles  VIII.,  was  the  instrument  elected  by 
God,  as  Cyrus  had  been  of  old,  and  all  men  who  desired  good 
rather  than  evil  were  to  rejoice  in  his  coming.  For  the  scourge 
would  fall  destructively  on  the  impenitent  alone.  Let  any 
city  of  Italy,  let  Florence  above  all  —  Florence  beloved  of 
God,  since  to  its  ear  the  warning  voice  had  been  specially 
sent  —  repent  and  turn  from  its  ways,  like  Nineveh  of  old, 
and  the  storm-cloud  would  roll  over  it  and  leave  only 
refreshing  raindrops. 

Fra  Girolamo's  word  was  powerful ;  yet  now  that  the  new 
Cyrus  had  already  been  three  months  in  Italy,  and  was  not  far 
from  the  gates  of  Florence,  his  presence  was  expected  there 
with  mixed  feelings,  in  which  fear  and  distrust  certainly  pre- 
dominated. At  present  it  was  not  understood  that  he  had  re- 
dressed any  grievances  ;  and  the  Florentines  clearly  had  noth- 
ing to  thank  him  for.  He  held  their  strong  frontier  fortresses, 
which  Piero  de'  Medici  had  given  up  to  him  without  securing 
any  honorable  terms  in  return  ;  he  had  done  nothing  to  quell 
the  alarming  revolt  of  Pisa,  which  had  been  encouraged  by  his 
presence  to  throw  off  the  Florentine  yoke ;  and  "  orators," 
even  with  a  prophet  at  their  head,  could  win  no  assurance 
from  him,  except  that  he  would  settle  everything  when  he  was 
once  within  the  walls  of  Florence.  Still,  there  was  the  satis- 
faction of  knowing  that  the  exasperating  Piero  de'  Medici  had 
been  fairly  pelted  out  for  the  ignominious  surrender  of  the 
fortresses,  and  in  that  act  of  energy  the  spirit  of  the  Republic 
had  recovered  some  of  its  old  fire. 

The  preparations  for  the  equivocal  guest  were  not  entirelj'^ 
those  of  a  city  resigned  to  submission.  Behind  the  bright 
drapery  and  banners  symbolical  of  joy,  there  were  prepara- 
tions of  another  sort  made  with  common  accord  by  govern- 
ment and  people.  Well  hidden  within  walls  there  were  hired 
soldiers  of  the  Republic,  hastily  called  in  from  the  surround- 
ing districts  ;  there  were  old  arms  duly  furbished,  and  sharj) 
tools  and  heavy  cudgels  laid  carefully  at  hand,  to  be  snatched 
up  on  short  notice :  there  were  excellent  boards  and  stakes  to 
form  barricades  upon  occasion,  and  a  good  supply  of  stones  to 
make  a  surprising  hail  from  the  \ipper  windows.     Above  all, 


THE  PRISONERS.  195 

there  were  people  very  strongly  in  the  humor  for  fighting  any 
personage  who  might  be  supposed  to  have  designs  of  hector- 
ing over  them,  they  having  lately  tasted  that  new  pleasure 
with  much  relish.  This  humor  was  not  diminished  by  the 
sight  of  occasional  parties  of  Frenchmen,  coming  beforehand 
to  choose  their  quarters,  with  a  hawk,  perhaps,  on  their  left 
wrist,  and,  metaphorically  speaking,  a  piece  of  chalk  in  their 
right  hand  to  mark  Italian  doors  withal ;  especially  as  credit- 
able historians  imply  that  many  sons  of  France  were  at  that 
time  characterized  by  something  approaching  to  a  swagger, 
which  must  have  whetted  the  Florentine  appetite  for  a  little 
stone-throwing. 

And  this  was  the  temper  of  Florence  on  the  morning  of  the 
1 7th  of  November,  1494. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE   PKISONERS, 

The  sky  was  gray,  but  that  made  little  difference  in  the 
Piazza  del  Duomo,  which  was  covered  with  its  holiday  sky  of 
blue  drapery,  and  its  constellations  of  yellow  lilies  and  coats 
of  arms.  The  sheaves  of  banners  were  unfurled  at  the  angles 
of  the  Baptistery,  but  there  was  no  carpet  yet  on  the  steps  of 
the  Duomo,  for  the  marble  was  being  trodden  by  numerous 
feet  that  were  not  at  all  exceptional.  It  was  the  hour  of  the 
Advent  sermons,  and  the  very  same  reasons  which  had  flushed 
the  streets  with  holiday  color  were  reasons  why  the  preaching 
in  the  Duomo  could  least  of  all  be  dispensed  with. 

But  not  all  the  feet  in  the  Piazza  were  hastening  towards 
the  steps.  People  of  high  and  low  degree  were  moving  to  and 
fro  with  the  brisk  pace  of  men  who  had  errands  before  them  ; 
groups  of  talkers  were  thickly  scattered,  some  willing  to  be 
late  for  the  sermon,  and  others  content  not  to  hear  it  at  all. 

The  expression  on  the  faces  of  these  apparent  loungers  was 
not  that  of  men  who  are  enjoying  the  pleasant  laziness  of  an 
opening  holiday.  Some  were  in  close  and  eager  discussion ; 
others  were  listening  with  keen  interest  to  a  single  spokesman, 
and  yet  from  time  to  time  turned  round  with  a  scanning 
glance  at  any  new  passer-by.  At  the  corner,  looking  towards 
the  Via  de'  Cerretani  —  just  where  the  artificial  rainbow  light 


196  ROMOLA. 

of  the  Piazza  ceased,  and  the  gray  morning  fell  on  the  sombre 
stone  houses  —  there  was  a  remarkable  cluster  of  the  working 
people,  most  of  them  bearing  on  their  dress  or  persons  the 
signs  of  their  daily  labor,  and  almost  all  of  them  carrying 
some  weapon,  or  some  tool  which  might  serve  as  a  weapon 
upon  occasion.  Standing  in  the  gray  light  of  the  street,  with 
bare  brawny  arms  and  soiled  garments,  they  made  all  the  more 
striking  the  transition  from  the  brightness  of  the  Piazza. 
They  were  listening  to  the  thin  notary,  Ser  Cioni,  who  had 
just  paused  on  his  way  to  the  Duomo.  His  biting  words 
could  get  only  a  contemptuous  reception  two  years  and  a  half 
before  in  the  Mercato,  but  now  he  spoke  with  the  more  com- 
placent humor  of  a  man  whose  party  is  uppermost,  and  who  is 
conscious  of  some  influence  with  the  people. 

"  Never  talk  to  me,"  he  was  saying,  in  his  incisive  voice, 
"never  talk  to  me  of  bloodthirsty  Swiss  or  fierce  French  in- 
fantry :  they  might  as  well  be  in  the  narrow  passes  of  the 
mountains  as  in  our  streets ;  and  peasants  have  destroyed  the 
finest  armies  of  our  condottieri  in  time  past,  when  they  had 
once  got  them  between  steep  precipices.  I  tell  you,  Floren- 
tines need  be  afraid  of  no  army  in  their  own  streets." 

"That's  true,  Ser  Cioni,"  said  a  man  whose  arms  and  hands 
were  discolored  by  crimson  dye,  which  looked  like  blood-stains, 
and  who  had  a  small  hatchet  stuck  in  his  belt ;  "  and  those 
French  cavaliers,  who  came  in  squaring  themselves  in  their 
smart  doublets  the  other  day,  saw  a  sample  of  the  dinner  we 
could  serve  u.p  for  them.  I  was  carrying  my  cloth  in  Ognis- 
santi,  when  I  saw  my  fine  Messeri  going  by,  looking  round  as 
if  they  thought  the  houses  of  the  Vespucci  and  the  Agli  a 
poor  pick  of  lodgings  for  them,  and  eying  us  Florentines,  like 
top-knotted  cocks  as  they  are,  as  if  they  pitied  us  because  we 
didn't  know  how  to  strut.  '  Yes,  my  fine  GalU,'  says  I,  '  stick 
out  your  stomachs  ;  I've  got  a  meat-axe  in  my  belt  that  will 
go  inside  you  all  the  easier ; '  when  presently  the  old  cow 
lowed,^  and  I  knew  something  had  happened — no  matter 
what.  So  I  threw  my  cloth  in  at  the  first  doorway,  and  took 
hold  of  my  meat-axe  and  ran  after  my  fine  cavaliers  towards 
the  Vigna  Nuova.  And  '  What  is  it,  Gucci o  ? '  said  I,  when 
he  came  up  with  me.  *I  think  it's  th©  Medici  coming  back,' 
said  Guccio.  Bembe  !  I  expected  so !  And  up  we  reared  a 
barricade,  and  the  Frenchmen  looked  behind  and  saw  them- 
selves in  a  trap ;  and  up  comes  a  good  swarm  of  our  Ciomjn,^ 

'  "  La  vncca  muglin  "  was  tlie  phrase  for  the  souiidiug  of  the  great  bell  in  the  tovrer 
of  the  Palazzo  Vecehio. 

'The  poorer  artiouus  couuecteJ  with  the  wool  trade  —  wool-btsaters,  carders, 
washer:),  etc. 


THE  PRISONERS.  197 

and  one  of  them  with  a  big  scythe  he  had  in  his  hand  mowed 
off  one  of  the  fine  cavalier's  feathers  :  —  it's  true  !  And.  the 
lasses  peppered  a  few  stones  down  to  frighten  them.  How- 
ever, Piero  de'  Medici  wasn't  come  after  all ;  and  it  was  a 
pity ;  for  we'd  have  left  him  neither  legs  nor  wings  to  go  away 
with  again." 

"  Well  spoken,  Oddo,"  said  a  young  butcher,  with  his  knife 
at  his  belt;  "and  it's  my  belief  Piero  will  be  a  good  while 
before  he  wants  to  come  back,  for  he  looked  as  frightened  as 
a  hunted  chicken,  when  we  hustled  and  pelted  him  in  the 
piazza.  He's  a  coward,  else  he  might  have  made  a  better 
stand  when  he'd  got  his  horsemen.  But  we'll  swallow  no 
Medici  any  more,  whatever  else  the  French  king  wants  to  make 
as  swallow." 

"But  I  like  not  those  French  cannon  they  talk  of,"  said 
Goro,  none  the  less  fat  for  two  years'  additional  grievances. 
"  San  Giovanni  defend  us  !  If  Messer  Domeneddio  means  so 
well  by  us  as  your  Frate  says  he  does,  Ser  Cioui,  why 
shouldn't  he  have  sent  the  French  another  way  to  Naples  ?  " 

"  Ay,  Goro,"  said  the  dyer ;  "  that's  a  question  worth  put- 
ting. Thou  art  not  such  a  pumpkin-head  as  I  took  thee  for. 
Why,  they  might  have  gone  to  Naples  by  Bologna,  eh,  Ser 
Cioni  ?  or  if  they'd  gone  to  Arezzo  — we  wouldn't  have  minded 
their  going  to  Arezzo." 

"  Fools !  It  will  be  for  the  good  and  glory  of  Florence," 
Ser  Cioni  began.  But  he  was  interrupted  by  the  exclamation, 
"  Look  there  !  "  which  burst  from  several  voices  at  once,  while 
the  faces  wer^  all  turned  to  a  party  who  were  advancing  along 
the  Via  de'  Cerretani. 

''  It's  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni,  and  one  of  the  French  noblemen 
who  are  in  his  house,"  said  Ser  Cioni,  in  some  contempt  at 
this  interruption.  "  He  pretends  to  look  well  satisfied  —  that 
deep  Tornabuoni  —  but  he's  a  Medicean  in  his  heart :  mind 
that." 

The  advancing  party  was  rather  a  brilliant  one,  for  there  was 
not  only  the  distinguished  presence  of  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni, 
and  the  splendid  costume  of  the  Frenchman  with  his  elabo- 
rately displayed  white  linen  and  gorgeous  embroidery  ;  there 
were  two  other  Florentines  of  high  birth  in  handsome  dresses 
donned  for  the  coming  procession,  and  on  the  left  hand  of  the 
Frenchman  was  a  figure  that  was  not  to  be  eclipsed  by  any 
amount  of  intention  or  brocade  —  a  figure  we  have  often  seen 
before.  He  wore  nothing  but  black,  for  he  was  in  mourning ; 
but  the  black  was  presently  to  be  covered  by  a  red  mantle, 


198  ROMOLA. 

for  he  too  was  to  walk  in  procession  as  Latin  Secretary  to  the 
Ten.  Tito  Melema  had  become  conspicuously  serviceable  in 
-the  intercourse  with  the  French  guests,  from  his  familiarity 
with  Southern  Italy,  and  his  readiness  in  the  French  tongue, 
which  he  had  spoken  in  his  early  youth ;  and  he  had  paid 
more  than  one  visit  to  the  French  camp  at  Signa.  The  lustre 
of  good-fortune  was  upon  him ;  he  was  smiling,  listening,  and 
explaining,  with  his  usual  graceful  unpretentious  ease,  and 
only  a  very  keen  eye  bent  on  studying  him  could  have  marked 
a  certain  amount  of  change  in  him  which  was  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for  by  the  lapse  of  eighteen  months.  It  was  that 
change  which  comes  from  the  final  departure  of  moral  youth- 
fulness  —  from  the  distinct  self-conscious  adoption  of  a  part 
in  life.  The  lines  of  the  face  were  as  soft  as  ever,  the  eyes  as 
pellucid  ;  but  something  was  gone  —  something  as  indefinable 
as  the  changes  in  the  morning  twilight. 

The  Frenchman  was  gathering  instructions  concerning  cere- 
monial before  riding  back  to  Signa,  and  now  he  was  going  to 
have  a  final  survey  of  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  where  the  royal 
procession  was  to  pause  for  religious  purposes.  The  distin- 
guished party  attracted  the  notice  of  all  eyes  as  it  entered  the 
piazza,  but  the  gaze  was  not  entirely  cordial  and  admiring; 
there  were  remarks  not  altogether  allusive  and  mysterious  to 
the  Frenchman's  hoof-shaped  shoes  —  delicate  flattery  of  royal 
superfluity  in  toes  ;  and  there  was  no  care  that  certain  snarl- 
ings  at  "  Mediceans  "  should  be  strictly  inaudible.  But  Lo- 
renzo Tornabuoni  possessed  that  power  of  dissembling  annoy- 
ance which  is  demanded  in  a  man  who  courts  popularity,  and 
Tito,  besides  his  natural  disposition  to  overcome  ill-will  by 
good-humor,  had  the  unimpassioned  feeling  of  the  alien  to- 
wards names  and  details  that  move  the  deepest  passions  of 
the  native. 

Arrived  where  they  could  get  a  good  oblique  view  of  the 
Duomo,  the  party  paused.  The  festoons  and  devices  placed 
over  the  central  doorway  excited  some  demur,  and  Torna- 
buoni beckoned  to  Piero  di  Cosimo,  who,  as  was  usual  with 
him  at  this  houi',  was  lounging  in  front  of  Nello's  shop. 
There  was  soon  an  animated  discussion,  and  it  became  highly 
amusing  from  the  Frenchman's  astonishment  at  Piero's  odd 
pungency  of  statement,  which  Tito  translated  literally. 
Even  snarling  onlookers  became  curious,  and  their  faces  began 
to  wear  the  half-smiling,  half-humiliated  expression  of  people 
who  are  not  within  hearing  of  the  joke  which  is  producing 
infectious  laughter.     It  was  a  d3lightful  moment  for  Tito,  foi 


Wii  1 1  mm.  BXM^\mm^^(^ 

iirl 


t:, 


■cs 


.    T= 


THE    DUOMO  —  CRUNELLESCHI'S    DOME 


THE  PRISONERS.  199 

he  was  the  only  one  of  the  party  who  could  have  made  so 
amusing  an  interpreter,  and  without  any  disposition  to  triumph- 
ant self-gratulation  he  revelled  in  the  sense  that  he  was  an 
object  of  liking  —  he  basked  in  approving  glances.  The  rain- 
bow light  fell  about  the  laughing  group,  and  the  grave  church- 
goers had  all  disappeared  within  the  walls.  It  seemed  as  if 
the  piazza  had  been  decorated  for  a  real  Florentine  holiday. 

Meanwhile  in  the  gray  light  of  the  unadorned  streets  there 
were  oncomers  who  made  no  show  of  linen  and  brocade,  and 
whose  humor  was  far  from  merry.  Here,  too,  the  French  dress 
and  hoofed  shoes  were  conspicuous,  but  they  were  being  pressed 
upon  by  a  larger  and  larger  number  of  non-admiring  Floren- 
tines. In  the  van  of  the  crowd  were  three  men  in  scanty  cloth- 
ing ;  each  had  his  hands  bound  together  by  a  cord,  and  a  rope 
was  fastened  round  his  neck  and  body,  in  such  a  way  that  he 
who  held  the  extremity  of  the  rope  might  easily  check  any 
rebellious  movement  by  the  threat  of  throttling.  The  men 
who  held  the  ropes  were  French  soldiers,  and  by  broken 
Italian  phrases  and  strokes  from  the  knotted  end  of  the  rope, 
they  from  time  to  time  stimulated  their  prisoners  to  beg.  Two 
of  them  were  obedient,  and  to  every  Florentine  they  had  en- 
countered had  held  out  their  bound  hands  and  said  in  piteous 
tones,  — 

"  For  the  love  of  God  and  the  Holy  Madonna,  give  us  some- 
thing towards  our  ransom !  We  are  Tuscans  :  we  were  made 
prisoners  in  Lunigiana." 

But  the  third  man  remained  obstinately  silent  under  all  the 
strokes  from  the  knotted  cord.  He  was  very  different  in 
aspect  from  his  two  fellow-prisoners.  They  were  young  and 
hardy,  and  in  the  scant  clothing  which  the  avarice  of  their 
captors  had  left  them,  looked  like  vulgar,  sturdy  mendicants. 
But  he  had  passed  the  boundary  of  old  age,  and  could  hardly 
be  less  than  four  or  five  and  sixty.  His  beard,  which  had 
grown  long  in  neglect,  and  the  hair  which  fell  thick  and 
straight  round  his  baldness,  were  nearly  white.  His  thick-set 
figure  was  still  firm  and  upright,  though  emaciated,  and 
seemed  to  express  energy  in  spite  of  age  —  an  expression 
that  was  partly  carried  out  in  the  dark  eyes  and  strong  dark 
eyebrows,  which  had  a  strangely  isolated  intensity  of  color  in 
the  midst  of  his  yellow,  bloodless,  deep-wrinkled  face  with  its 
lank  gray  hairs.  And  yet  there  was  something  fitful  in  the 
eyes  which  contradicted  the  occasional  flash  of  energy  :  after 
looking  round  with  quick  fierceness  at  windows  and  faces, 
they  fell  again  with  a  lost  and  wandering  look.     But  his  lips 


200  ROM  OLA. 

were  motionless,  and  he  held  his  hands  resolutely  down.  He 
would  not  beg. 

This  sight  had  been  witnessed  by  the  Florentines  with 
growing  exasperation.  Many  standing  at  their  doors  or  pass- 
ing  quietly  along  had  at  once  given  money  —  some  in  half- 
automatic  response  to  an  appeal  in  the  name  of  God,  others  in 
that  unquestioning  awe  of  the  French  soldiery  which  had 
been  created  by  the  reports  of  their  cruel  warfare,  and  on 
which  the  French  themselves  counted  as  a  guarantee  of  im- 
munity in  their  acts  of  insolence.  But  as  the  group  had  pro- 
ceeded farther  into  the  heart  of  the  city,  that  compliance  had 
gradually  disappeared,  and  the  soldiers  found  themselves 
escorted  by  a  gathering  troop  of  men  and  boys,  who  kept  up 
a  chorus  of  exclamations  sufficiently  intelligible  to  foreign 
ears  without  any  interpreter.  The  soldiers  themselves  began 
to  dislike  their  position,  for,  with  a  strong  inclination  to  use 
their  weapons,  they  were  checked  by  the  necessity  for  keep- 
ing a  secure  hold  on  their  prisoners,  and  they  were  now  hurry- 
ing along  in  the  hope  of  finding  shelter  in  a  hostelry. 

"  French  dogs  !  "  "  Bullock-feet ! "  "  Snatch  their  pikes 
from  them  !  "  "  Cut  the  cords  and  make  them  run  for  their 
prisoners.  They'll  run  as  fast  as  geese  —  don't  you  see 
they're  web-footed  ?  "  These  were  the  cries  which  the  sol- 
diers vaguely  understood  to  be  jeers,  and  probably  threats. 
But  every  one  seemed  disposed  to  give  invitations  of  this 
spirited  kind  rather  than  to  act  upon  them. 

"  Santiddio  !  here's  a  sight !  "  said  the  dyer,  as  soon  as  he 
had  divined  the  meaning  of  the  advancing  tumult,  "  and  the 
fools  do  nothing  but  hoot.  Come  along  !  "  he  added,  snatch- 
ing his  axe  from  his  belt,  and  running  to  join  the  crowd,  fol- 
lowed by  the  butcher  and  all  the  rest  of  his  companions, 
except  Goro,  who  hastily  retreated  up  a  narrow  passage. 

The  sight  of  the  dyer,  running  forward  with  blood-red  arms 
and  axe  uplifted,  and  with  his  cluster  of  rough  companions 
behind  him,  had  a  stimulating  effect  on  the  crowd.  Not  that 
he  did  anything  else  than  pass  beyond  the  soldiers  and  thrust 
himself  well  among  his  fellow-citizens,  flourishing  his  axe  ; 
but  he  served  as  a  stirring  symbol  of  street-tighting,  like  the 
waving  of  a  well-known  gonfalon.  And  the  first  sign  that  tire 
was  ready  to  burst  out  was  something  as  rapid  as  a  little  leaping 
tongue  of  flame;  it  was  an  act  of  the  conjurer's  impish  lad 
Lollo,  who  was  dancing  and  jeering  in  front  of  the  ingenuous 
boys  that  made  the  majority  of  the  crowd.  Lollo  had  no 
great  compassion  for  the  prisoners,  but  being  conscious  of  an 


THE  PRISONERS.  201 

excellent  knife  which  was  his  unfailing  companion,  it  had 
seemed  to  him  from  the  first  that  to  jump  forward,  cut  a  rope, 
and  leap  back  again  before  the  soldier  who  held  it  could  use 
his  weapon,  would  be  an  amusing  and  dexterous  piece  of  mis- 
chief. And  now,  when  the  people  began  to  hoot  and  jostle 
more  vigorously,  Lollo  felt  that  his  moment  was  come  —  he 
was  close  to  the  eldest  prisoner  :  in  an  instant  he  had  cut  the 
cord. 

"  Run,  old  one  !  "  he  piped  in  the  prisoner's  ear,  as  soon  as 
the  cord  was  in  two  ;  and  himself  set  the  example  of  running 
as  if  he  were  helped  along  with  wings,  like  a  scared  fowl. 

The  prisoner's  sensations  were  not  too  slow  for  him  to  seize 
the  opportunity  :  the  idea  of  escape  had  been  continually  pres- 
ent with  liira,  and  he  had  gathered  fresh  hope  from  the  tem- 
per of  the  crowd.  He  ran  at  once ;  but  his  speed  would 
hardly  have  sufficed  for  him  if  the  Florentines  had  not  in- 
stantaneously rushed  between  him  and  his  captor.  He  ran  on 
into  the  piazza,  but  he  quickly  heard  the  tramp  of  feet  be- 
hind him,  for  the  other  two  prisoners  had  been  released, 
and  the  soldiers  were  struggling  and  fighting  their  way 
after  them,  in  such  tardigrade  fashion  as  their  hoof-shaped 
shoes  would  allow  —  impeded,  but  not  very  resolutely  attacked, 
by  the  people.  One  of  the  two  younger  prisoners  turned 
up  the  Borgo  di  San  Lorenzo,  and  thus  made  a  partial  diversion 
of  the  hubbub ;  but  the  main  struggle  was  still  towards  the 
piazza,  where  all  eyes  were  turned  on  it  with  alarmed  curios- 
ity. The  cause  could  not  be  precisely  guessed,  for  the  French 
dress  was  screened  by  the  impeding  crowd. 

"  An  escape  of  prisoners,"  said  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni,  as  he 
and  his  party  turned  round  just  against  the  steps  of  the 
Duomo,  and  saw  a  prisoner  rushing  by  them.  "  The  people 
are  not  content  with  having  emptied  the  Bargello  the  other 
day.  If  there  is  no  other  authority  in  sight  they  must  fall  on 
the  sbirri  and  secure  freedom  to  thieves.  Ah !  there  is  a 
French  soldier :  that  is  more  serious." 

The  soldier  he  saw  was  struggling  along  on  the  north  side 
of  the  piazza,  but  the  object  of  his  pursuit  had  taken  the 
other  direction.  That  object  was  the  eldest  prisoner,  who  had 
wheeled  round  the  Baptistery  and  was  running  towards  the 
Duomo,  determined  to  take  refuge  in  that  sanctuary  rather 
than  trust  to  his  speed.  But  in  mounting  the  steps,  his  foot 
received  a  shock ;  he  was  precipitated  towards  the  group  of 
signori,  whose  backs  were  turned  to  him,  and  was  only  able  to 
recover  his  balance  as  he  clutched  one  of  them  by  the  arm. 


202  ROMOLA. 

It  was  Tito  Melema  who  felt  that  clutch.  He  turned  his 
head,  and  saw  the  face  of  his  adoptive  father,  Baldassarre 
Calvo,  close  to  his  own. 

The  two  men  looked  at  each  other,  silent  as  death :  Baldas- 
sarre, with  dark  fierceness  and  a  tightening  grip  of  the  soiled 
worn  hands  on  the  velvet-clad  arm  ;  Tito,  with  cheeks  and 
lips  all  bloodless,  fascinated  by  terror.  It  seemed  a  long 
while  to  them  —  it  was  but  a  moment. 

•  The  first  sound  Tito  heard  was  the  short  laugh  of  Piero  di 
Cosimo,  who  stood  close  by  him  and  was  the  only  person  that 
could  see  his  face. 

"Ha,  ha !  I  know  what  a  ghost  should  be  now." 

"This  is  another  escaped  prisoner,"  said  Lorenzo  Torna- 
buoni.     "  Who  is  he,  I  wonder  ?  " 

"  Some  madman,  surely,''^  said  Tito. 

He  hardly  knew  how  the  words  had  come  to  his  lips :  there 
are  moments  when  our  passions  speak  and  decide  for  us,  and 
we  seem  to  stand  by  and  wonder.  They  carry  in  them  an  in- 
spiration of  crime,  that  in  one  instant  does  the  work  of  long 
premeditation. 

The  two  men  had  not  taken  their  eyes  off  each  other,  and 
it  seemed  to  Tito,  when  he  had  spoken,  that  some  magical 
poison  had  darted  from  Baldassarre's  eyes,  and  that  he  felt  it 
rushing  through  his  veins.  But  the  next  instant  the  grasp 
on  his  arm  had  relaxed,  and  Baldassarre  had  disappeared 
within  the  church. 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

AFTER-THOUGHTS. 

"You  are  easily  frightened,  though,"  said  Piero,  with  an- 
other scornful  laugh.  "My  portrait  is  not  as  good  as  the 
original.  But  the  old  fellow  had  a  tiger  look  ;  I  must  go  into 
the  Duomo  and  see  him  again." 

"  It  is  not  pleasant  to  be  laid  hold  of  by  a  madman,  if  mad- 
man he  be,"  said  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni,  in  polite  excuse  of 
Tito,  "but  perhaps  he  is  only  a  rufiian.  We  shall  hear.  I 
think  we  must  see  if  we  have  authority  enough  to  stop  this 
disturbance  between  our  people  and  your  countrymen,"  he 
added,  addressing  the  Frenchman. 

They  advanced  toward  the  crowd  with  their  swords  drawn, 


A  FTER-  THO  UGH  TS.  203 

all  the  quiet  spectators  making  an  escort  for  them.  Tito  went 
too :  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  know  what  others  knew 
about  Baldassarre,  and  the  first  palsy  of  terror  was  being  suc- 
ceeded by  the  rapid  devices  to  which  mortal  danger  will 
stimulate  the  timid. 

The  rabble  of  men  and  boys,  more  inclined  to  hoot  at  the 
soldier  and  torment  him  than  to  receive  or  inflict  any  serious 
wounds,  gave  way  at  the  approach  of  signori  with  drawn 
swords,  and  the  French  soldier  was  interrogated.  He  and  his 
companions  had  simply  brought  their  prisoners  into  the  city 
that  they  might  beg  money  for  their  ransom  :  two  of  the  pris- 
oners were  Tuscan  soldiers  taken  in  Lunigiana;  the  other,  an 
elderly  man,  was  with  a  party  of  Genoese,  with  whom  the 
French  foragers  had  come  to  blows  near  Fivizzano.  He  might 
be  mad,  but  he  was  harmless.  The  soldier  knew  no  more, 
being  unable  to  understand  a  word  the  old  man  said.  Tito 
heard  so  far,  but  he  was  deaf  to  everything  else  till  he  was 
specially  addressed.     It  was  Tornabuoni  who  spoke. 

"  Will  you  go  back  with  us,  Melema  ?  Or,  since  Messere  is 
going  off  to  Signa  now,  will  you  wisely  follow  the  fashion  of 
the  times  and  go  to  hear  the  Frate,  who  will  be  like  the  tor- 
rent at  its  height  this  morning  ?  It's  what  we  must  all  do, 
you  know,  if  we  are  to  save  our  Medicean  skins.  /  should  go 
if  I  had  the  leisure." 

Tito's  face  had  recovered  its  color  now,  and  he  could  make 
an  effort  to  speak  with  gayety. 

"  Of  course  I  am  among  the  admirers  of  the  inspired  orator," 
he  said,  smilingly;  "but,  unfortunately,  I  shall  be  occupied 
with  the  Segretario  till  the  time  of  the  procession." 

"I  am  going  into  the  Duomo  to  look  at  that  savage  old 
man  again,"  said  Piero. 

"Then  have  the  charity  to  show  him  to  one  of  the  hospitals 
for  travellers,  Piero  mio,"  said  Tornabuoni.  "The  monks 
may  find  out  whether  he  wants  putting  into  a  cage." 

The  party  separated,  and  Tito  took  his  way  to  the  Palazzo 
Vecchio,  where  he  was  to  find  Bartolommeo  Scala.  It  was 
not  a  long  walk,  but,  for  Tito,  it  was  stretched  out  like  the 
minutes  of  our  morning  dreams  :  the  short  spaces  of  street 
and  piazza  held  memories,  and  previsions,  and  torturing  fears, 
that  might  have  made  the  history  of  months.  He  felt  as  if  a 
serpent  had  begun  to  coil  round  his  limbs.  Baldassarre  living, 
and  in  Florence,  was  a  living  revenge,  which  would  no  more 
rest  than  a  winding  serpent  would  rest  until  it  had  crushed 
its  prey.     It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  that  man  to  let  an 


204  ROMOLA. 

injury  pass  unavenged :  his  love  and  his  hatred  were  of  that 
passionate  fervor  which  subjugates  all  the  rest  of  the  being, 
and  makes  a  man  sacrifice  himself  to  his  passion  as  if  it  were 
a  deity  to  be  worshipped  with  self-destruction.  Baldassarre 
had  relaxed  his  hold,  and  had  disappeared.  Tito  knew  well 
how  to  interpret  that :  it  meant  that  the  vengeance  was  to  be 
studied  that  it  might  be  sure.  If  he  had  not  uttered  those 
decisive  words  —  "  He  is  a  madman  "  —  if  he  could  have  sum- 
moned up  the  state  of  mind,  tiie  courage,  necessary  for  avow- 
ing his  recognition  of  Baldassarre,  would  not  the  risk  have 
been  less  ?  He  might  have  declared  himself  to  have  had 
what  he  believed  to  be  positive  evidence  of  Baldassarre's 
death  ;  and  the  only  persons  who  could  ever  have  had  positive 
knowledge  to  contradict  him,  were  Fra  Luca,  who  was  dead, 
and  the  crew  of  the  companion  galley,  who  had  brought  him 
the  news  of  the  encounter  with  the  pirates.  The  chances 
were  infinite  against  Baldassarre's  having  met  again  with  any 
one  of  that  crew,  and  Tito  thought  Math  bitterness  that  a 
timely,  well-devised  falsehood  might  have  saved  him  from  any 
fatal  consequences.  But  to  have  told  that  falsehood  would 
have  required  perfect  self-command  in  the  moment  of  a  con- 
vulsive shock :  he  seemed  to  have  spoken  without  any  pre- 
conception :  the  words  had  leaped  forth  like  a  sudden  birth 
that  had  been  begotten  and  nourished  in  the  darkness. 

Tito  was  experiencing  that  inexorable  law  of  human  souls, 
that  we  prepare  ourselves  for  sudden  deeds  by  the  reiterated 
choice  of  good  or  evil  which  gradually  determines  character. 

There  was  but  one  chance  for  him  now ;  the  chance  of 
Baldassarre's  failure  in  finding  his  revenge.  And  —  Tito 
grasped  at  a  thought  more  actively  cruel  than  any  he  had  ever 
encouraged  before :  might  not  his  own  unpremeditated  words 
have  some  truth  in  them  ?  Enough  truth,  at  least,  to  bear 
him  out  in  his  denial  of  any  declaration  Baldassarre  might 
make  about  him?  The  old  man  looked  strange  and  wild; 
with  his  eager  heart  and  brain,  suffering  was  likely  enough  to 
have  produced  madness.  If  it  were  so,  the  vengeance  that 
strove  to  inflict  disgrace  might  be  baffled. 

But  there  was  another  form  of  vengeance  not  to  be  baffled 
by  ingenious  lying.  Baldassarre  belonged  to  a  race  to  whom 
the  thrust  of  the  dagger  seems  almost  as  natural  an  impulse 
as  the  outleap  of  the  tiger's  talons.  Tito  shrank  with  shud- 
dering dread  from  disgrace ;  but  he  had  also  that  physical 
dread  which  is  inseparable  from  a  soft  pleasure-loving  nature, 
and  which  prevents  a  man  from  meeting  wounds  and  death  as 


AFTER-THOUGHTS.  205 

a  welcome  relief  from  disgrace.  His  thoughts  flew  at  once 
to  some  hidden  defensive  armor  that  might  save  him  from  a 
vengeance  which  no  subtlety  could  parry. 

He  wondered  at  the  power  of  the  passionate  fear  that  posv 
sessed  him.  It  was  as  if  he  had  been  smitten  with  a  blighting 
disease  that  had  suddenly  turned  the  joyous  sense  of  young 
life  into  pain. 

There  was  still  one  resource  open  to  Tito.  He  might  have 
turned  back,  sought  Baldassarre  again,  confessed  everything  to 
him  —  to  Romola  —  to  all  the  world.  But  he  never  thought 
of  that.  The  repentance  which  cuts  off  all  moorings  to  evil, 
demands  something  more  than  selfish  fear.  He  had  no  sense 
that  there  was  strength  and  safety  in  truth ;  the  only  strength 
he  trusted  to  lay  in  his  ingenuity  and  his  dissimulation.  Noav 
that  the  first  shock,  which  had  called  up  the  traitorous  signs 
of  fear,  was  well  past,  he  hoped  to  be  prepared  for  all  emer- 
gencies by  cool  deceit  —  and  defensive  armor. 

It  was  a  characteristic  fact  in  Tito's  experience  at  this  crisis, 
that  no  direct  measures  for  ridding  himself  of  Baldassarre  ever 
occurred  to  him.  All  other  possibilities  passed  through  his 
mind,  even  to  his  oavu  flight  from  Florence;  but  he  never 
thought  of  any  scheme  for  removing  his  enemy.  His  dread 
generated  no  active  malignity,  and  he  would  still  have  been 
glad  not  to  give  pain  to  any  mortal.  He  had  simply  chosen 
to  make  life  easy  to  himself  —  to  carry  his  human  lot,  if  pos- 
sible, in  such  a  way  that  it  should  pinch  him  nowhere  ;  and  the 
choice  had,  at  various  times,  landed  him  in  unexpected  posi- 
tions. The  question  now  was,  not  whether  he  should  divide 
the  common  pressure  of  destiny  with  his  suffering  fellow-men  ; 
it  was  whether  all  the  resources  of  lying  would  save  him  from 
being  crushed  by  the  consequences  of  that  habitual  choice. 


206  ROMOLA 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 

INSIDE   THE    DUOMO. 

When  Baldassarre,  with  his  hands  bound  together,  and  the 
rope  round  his  neck  and  body,  pushed  his  way  behind  the  cur- 
tain, and  saw  the  interior  of  the  Duomo  before  him,  he  gave  a 
start  of  astonishment,  and  stood  still  against  the  doorway. 
He  had  expected  to  see  a  vast  nave  empty  of  everything  but 
lifeless  emblems  — side  altars  with  candles  unlit,  dim  pictures, 
pale  and  rigid  statues  —  with  perhaps  a  few  worshippers  in 
the  distant  choir  following  a  monotonous  chant.  That  was 
the  ordinary  aspect  of  churches  to  a  man  who  never  went  into 
them  with  any  religious  purpose. 

And  he  saw,  instead,  a  vast  multitude  of  warm,  living  faces 
upturned  in  breathless  silence  towards  the  pulpit,  at  the  angle 
between  the  nave  and  the  choir.  The  multitude  was  of  all 
ranks,  from  magistrates  and  dames  of  gentle  nurture  to  coarsely 
clad  artisans  and  country  people.  In  the  pulpit  was  a  Domini- 
can friar,  with  strong  features  and  dark  hair,  preaching  with 
the  crucifix  in  his  hand. 

For  the  first  few  minutes  Baldassarre  noted  nothing  of  his 
preaching.  Silent  as  his  entrance  had  been,  some  eyes  near 
the  doorway  had  been  turned  on  him  with  surprise  and  sus- 
picion. The  rope  indicated  plainly  enough  that  he  was  an 
escaped  prisoner,  but  in  that  case  the  church  was  a  sanctuary 
which  he  had  a  right  to  claim  ;  his  advanced  years  and  look 
of  wild  misery  were  fitted  to  excite  pity  rather  than  alarm  ; 
and  as  he  stood  motionless,  with  eyes  that  soon  wandered 
absently  from  the  wide  scene  before  him  to  the  pavement  at 
his  feet,  those  who  had  observed  his  entrance  presently  ceased 
to  regard  him,  and  became  absorbed  again  in  the  stronger 
interest  of  listening  to  the  sermon. 

Among  the  eyes  that  had  been  turned  towards  him  were 
Romola's  :  she  had  entered  late  through  one  of  the  side  doors 
and  was  so  placed  that  she  had  a  full  view  of  the  main  entrance. 
She  had  looked  long  and  attentively  at  Baldassarre,  for  gray 
hairs  made  a  peculiar  appeal  to  her,  and  the  stamp  of  some 
unwonted  suffering  in  the  face,  confirmed  by  the  cord  round 


m. 


k- 

^     V 


I"— ~ 


DETAIL    OF   THE    FACADE    OF    THE    DUOMO. 


INSIDE   THE  DUOMO.  207 

his  neck,  stirred  in  her  those  sensibilities  towards  the  sorrows 
of  age,  which  her  whole  life  had  tended  to  develop.  She  fan- 
cied that  his  eyes  had  met  hers  in  their  first  wandering  gaze : 
but  Baldassarre  had  not,  in  reality,  noted  her ;  he  had  only 
had  a  startled  consciousness  of  the  general  scene,  and  the  con- 
sciousness was  a  mere  flash  that  made  no  perceptible  break  in 
the  fierce  tumult  of  emotion  which  the  encounter  with  Tito 
had  created.  Images  from  the  past  kept  urging  themselves 
upon  him  like  delirious  visions  strangely  blended  with  thirst 
and  anguish.  No  distinct  thought  for  the  fviture  could  shape 
itself  in  the  midst  of  that  fiery  passion :  the  nearest  approach 
to  such  thought  was  the  bitter  sense  of  enfeebled  powers,  and 
a  vague  determination  to  universal  distrust  and  suspicion. 
Suddenly  he  felt  himself  vibrating  to  loud  tones  which  seemed 
like  the  thundering  echo  of  his  own  passion.  A  voice  that 
penetrated  his  very  marrow  with  its  accent  of  triumphant 
certitude  was  saying,  —  "  The  day  of  vengeance  is  at  hand." 

Baldassarre  quivered  and  looked  up.  He  was  too  distant  to 
see  more  than  the  general  aspect  of  the  preacher  standing, 
with  his  right  arm  outstretched,  lifting  up  the  crucifix  ;  but  he 
panted  for  the  threatening  voice  again  as  if  it  had  been  a 
promise  of  bliss.  There  was  a  pause  before  the  preacher  spoke 
again.  He  gradually  lowered  his  arm.  He  deposited  the 
crucifix  on  the  edge  of  the  pulpit,  and  crossed  his  arms  over 
his  breast,  looking  round  at  the  multitude  as  if  he  would  meet 
the  glance  of  every  individual  face. 

"  All  ye  in  Florence  are  my  witnesses,  for  I  spoke  not  in  a 
corner.  Ye  are  my  witnesses,  that  four  years  ago,  when  there 
were  yet  no  signs  of  war  and  tribulation,  I  preached  the  com- 
ing of  the  scourge.  I  lifted  up  my  voice  as  a  trumpet  to  the 
prelates  and  princes  and  people  of  Italy  and  said,  The  cup  of 
your  iniquity  is  full.  Behold,  the  thunder  of  the  Lord  is 
gathering,  and  it  shall  fall  and  break  the  cup,  and  your  iniquity, 
which  seems  to  you  as  pleasant  wine,  shall  be  poured  out  upon 
you,  and  shall  be  as  molten  lead.  And  you,  0  priests,  who 
say.  Ha,  ha!  there  is  no  Presence  in  the  sanctuary  —  the 
Shechinah  is  naught — the  Mercy-seat  is  bare:  we  may  sin 
behind  the  veil,  and  who  shall  punish  us  ?  To  you,  I  said, 
the  presence  of  God  shall  be  revealed  in  his  temple  as  a  con- 
suming fire,  and  your  sacred  garments  shall  become  a  winding- 
sheet  of  flame,  and  for  sweet  music  there  shall  be  shrieks  and 
hissing,  and  for  soft  couches  there  shall  be  thorns,  and  for  the 
breath  of  wantons  shall  come  the  pestilence.  Trust  not  in 
your  gold  and  silver,  trust  not  in  your  high  fortresses ;  for, 


208  ROMOLA. 

though  the  walls  were  of  iron,  and  the  fortresses  of  adamant, 
the  Most  High  shall  put  terror  into  your  hearts  and  weakness 
into  your  councils,  so  that  you  shall  be  confounded  and  flee 
like  women.  He  shall  break  in  pieces  mighty  men  without 
number,  and  put  others  in  their  stead.  For  God  will  no  longer 
endure  the  pollution  of  his  sanctuary  ;  he  will  thoroughly 
purge  his  Church. 

"  And  forasmuch  as  it  is  written  that  God  will  do  nothing 
but  he  revealeth  it  to  his  servants  the  prophets,  he  has  chosen 
me,  his  unworthy  servant,  and  made  his  purpose  present  to 
my  soul  in  the  living  word  of  the  Scriptures,  and  in  the  deeds 
of  his  providence ;  and  by  the  ministry  of  angels  he  has  re- 
vealed it  to  me  in  visions.  And  his  word  possesses  me  so 
that  I  am  but  as  the  branch  of  the  forest  when  the  wind  of 
heaven  penetrates  it,  and  it  is  not  in  me  to  keep  silence,  even 
though  I  maybe  a  derision  to  the  scorner.  And  for  four  years 
I  have  preached  in  obedience  to  the  Divine  will :  in  the 
face  of  scoffing  I  have  preached  three  things,  which  the  Lord 
has  delivered  to  me  :  that  in  these  times  God  will  regenerate 
his  Church,  and  that  before  the  regeneration  must  com.e  the 
scourge  over  all  Italy,  and  that  tliese  things  will  cosine  quickly. 

"  But  hypocrites  who  cloak  their  hatred  of  the  truth  with  a 
show  of  love  have  said  to  me,  '  Come  now,  Frate,  leave  your 
prophesyings :  it  is  enough  to  teach  virtue.'  To  these  I  an- 
swer :  '  Yes,  you  say  in  your  hearts,  God  lives  afar  off,  and  his 
word  is  as  a  parchment  written  by  dead  men,  and  he  deals  not 
as  in  the  days  of  old,  rebuking  the  nations,  and  punishing  the 
oppressors,  and  smiting  the  unholy  priests  as  he  smote  the 
sons  of  Eli.  But  I  cry  again  in  your  ears :  God  is  near  and 
not  afar  off:  his  judgments  change  not.  He  is  the  God  of 
armies ;  the  strong  men  who  go  up  to  battle  are  his  ministers, 
even  as  the  storm,  and  fire,  and  pestilence.  He  drives  them 
by  the  breath  of  his  angels,  and  they  come  upon  the  chosen 
land  which  has  forsaken  the  covenant.  And  thou,  0  Italy, 
art  the  chosen  land ;  has  not  God  placed  his  sanctuary  within 
thee,  and  thou  hast  polluted  it  ?  Behold,  the  ministers  of  his 
wrath  are  upon  thee  —  they  are  at  thy  very  doors  ! '  " 

Savonarola's  voice  had  been  rising  in  impassioned  force  up 
to  this  point,  when  he  became  suddenly  silent,  let  his  hands 
fall  and  clasped  them  quietly  before  him.  His  silence,  in- 
stead of  being  the  signal  for  small  movements  amongst  his 
audience,  seemed  to  be  as  strong  a  spell  to  them  as  his  voice. 
Through  the  vast  area  of  the  cathedral  men  and  women  sat 
with  faces  upturned,  like  breathing  statues,  till  the  voice  was 
heard  again  in  clear  low  tones. 


INSIDE   THE  DUOMO.  209 

"  Yet  there  is  a  pause  —  even  as  in  the  days  when  Jerusa- 
lem was  destroyed  there  was  a  pause  that  the  chiklren  of  God 
might  flee  from  it.  There  is  a  stillness  before  the  storm  :  lo, 
there  is  blackness  above,  but  not  a  leaf  quakes  :  the  winds 
are  stayed,  that  the  voice  of  God's  warning  may  be  heard. 
Hear  it  now,  0  Floremce,  chosen  city  in  the  chosen  land  !  Re- 
pent and  forsake  evil :  do  justice  :  love  mercy :  put  away  all 
uncleanness  from  among  you,  that  the  spirit  of  truth  and  holi- 
ness may  fill  your  souls  and  breathe  through  all  your  streets 
and  habitations,  and  then  the  pestilence  shall  not  enter,  and 
the  sword  shall  pass  over  you  and  leave  you  unhurt. 

"  For  the  sword  is  hanging  from  the  sky  ;  it  is  quivering  ; 
it  is  about  to  fall !  The  sword  of  God  upon  the  earth,  swift 
and  sudden  !  Did  I  not  tell  you,  years  ago,  that  I  had  beheld 
the  vision  and  heard  the  voice  ?  And  behold,  it  is  fulfilled ! 
Is  there  not  a  king  with  his  army  at  your  gates  ?  Does  not 
the  earth  shake  with  the  tread  of  horses  and  the  wheels  of 
swift  cannon  ?  Is  there  not  a  fierce  multitude  that  can  lay 
bare  the  land  as  with  a  sharp  razor  ?  I  tell  you  the  French 
king  with  his  army  is  the  minister  of  God :  God  shall  guide 
him  as  the  hand  guides  a  sharp  sickle,  and  the  joints  of  the 
wicked  shall  melt  before  him,  and  they  shall  be  mown  down 
as  stubble  :  he  that  fleeth  of  them  shall  not  flee  away,  and  he 
that  escapeth  of  them  shall  not  be  delivered.  And  the  tyrants 
who  have  made  to  themselves  a  throne  out  of  the  vices  of  the 
multitude,  and  the  unbelieving  priests  who  traffic  in  the  souls 
of  men  and  fill  the  very  sanctuary  with  fornication,  shall  be 
hurled  from  their  soft  couches  into  burning  hell ;  and  the 
pagans  and  they  who  sinned  under  the  old  covenant  shall 
stand  aloof  and  say :  '  Lo,  these  men  have  brought  the  stench 
of  a  new  wickedness  into  the  everlasting  fire.' 

"  But  thou,  0  Florence,  take  the  offered  mercy.  See  !  the 
Cross  is  held  out  to  you  :  come  and  be  healed.  Which  among 
the  nations  of  Italy  has  had  a  token  like  unto  yours  ?  The 
tyrant  is  driven  out  from  among  you  :  the  men  who  held  a 
bribe  in  their  left  hand  and  a  rod  in  the  right  are  gone  forth, 
and  no  blood  has  been  spilled.  And  now  put  away  every  other 
abomination  from  among  you,  and  you  shall  be  strong  in  the 
strength  of  the  living  God.  Wash  yourselves  from  the  black 
pitch  of  your  vices,  which  have  made  you  even  as  the  heathens  : 
put  away  the  envy  and  hatred  that  have  made  your  city  as  a 
nest  of  wolves.  And  there  shall  no  harm  happen  to  you  :  and 
the  passage  of  armies  shall  be  to  you  as  a  flight  of  birds,  and 
rebellious  Pisa  shall  be  given  to  you  again,  and  famine  and 


210  ROM  OLA. 

pestilence  shall  be  far  from  your  gates,  and  you  shall  be  as  a 
beacon  among  the  nations.  But,  mark  !  while  you  suffer  the 
accursed  thing  to  lie  in  the  camp  you  shall  be  afflicted  and 
tormented  even  though  a  remnant  among  you  may  be  saved." 

These  admonitions  and  promises  had  been  spoken  in  an  in- 
cisive tone  of  authority  ;  but  in  the  next  sentence  the  preach- 
er's voice  melted  into  a  strain  of  entreaty. 

"  Listen,  0  people,  over  whom  my  heart  yearns,  as  the 
heart  of  a  mother  over  the  children  she  has  travailed  for ! 
God  is  my  witness  that  but  for  your  sakes  I  would  willingly 
live  as  a  turtle  in  the  depths  of  the  forest,  singing  low  to  my 
Beloved,  who  is  mine  and  T  am  his.  For  you  I  toil,  for  you  I 
languish,  for  you  my  nights  are  spent  in  watching,  and  my 
soul  melteth  away  for  very  heaviness.  0  Lord,  thou  knowest 
I  am  willing  —  I  am  ready.  Take  me,  stretch  me  on  thy 
cross :  let  the  wicked  who  delight  in  blood,  and  rob  the  poor, 
and  defile  the  temple  of  their  bodies,  and  harden  them- 
selves against  thy  mercy —  let  them  wag  their  heads  and  shoot 
out  the  lip  at  me :  let  the  thorns  press  upon  my  brow,  and  let 
my  sweat  be  anguish  —  I  desire  to  be  made  like  thee  in  thy 
great  love.  But  let  me  see  the  fruit  of  my  travail  —  let  this 
people  be  saved  !  Let  me  see  them  clothed  in  purity  :  let  me 
hear  their  voices  rise  in  concord  as  the  voices  of  the  angels : 
let  them  see  no  wisdom  but  in  thy  eternal  law,  no  beauty  but 
in  holiness.  Then  they  shall  lead  the  way  before  the  nations, 
and  the  people  from  the  four  winds  shall  follow  them,  and  be 
gathered  into  the  fold  of  the  blessed.  For  it  is  thy  will,  0 
God,  that  the  earth  shall  be  converted  unto  thy  law  :  it  is  thy 
will  that  wickedness  shall  cease  and  love  shall  reign.  Come, 
O  blessed  promise  ;  and  behold,  I  am  willing  —  lay  me  on  the 
altar:  let  my  blood  flow  and  the  fire  consume  me;  but  let  my 
witness  be  remembered  among  men,  that  iniquity  shall  not 
prosper  forever."  ^ 

During  the  last  appeal,  Savonarola  had  stretched  out  his 
arms  and  lifted  up  his  eyes  to  heaven ;  his  strong  voice  had 
alternately  trembled  with  emotion  and  risen  again  in  renewed 
energy  ;  but  the  passion  with  which  he  offered  himself  as  a 
victim  became  at  last  too  strong  to  allow  of  further  speech, 
and  he  ended  in  a  sob.  Every  changing  tone,  vibrating 
through  the  audience,  shook  them  into  answering  emotion. 
There  were  plenty  among  them  who  had  very  moderate  faith 
in  the  Frate's  prophetic  mission,  and  who  in  their  cooler  mo- 

'  The  serninn  Ixtc  {riven  is  not  ii  triinslation,  but  a  free  rcpreseutiition  of  Fr:i  Giro* 
lanio'^  p;'eacliiug  in  its  more  iiupassioued  uiouieutii. 


INSIDE   THE  DUOMO.  211 

ments  loved  him  little ;  nevertlieless,  they  too  were  carried 
along  by  the  great  wave  of  feeling  which  gathered  its  force 
from  sympathies  that  lay  deeper  than  all  theory.  A  loud  re- 
sponding sob  rose  at  once  from  the  wide  multitude,  while 
Savonarola  had  fallen  on  his  knees  and  buried  his  face  in  his 
mantle.  He  felt  in  that  moment  the  rapture  and  glory  of 
martyrdom  without  its  agony. 

In  that  great  sob  of  the  multitude  Baldassarre's  had  min- 
gled. Among  all  the  human  beings  present,  there  was  per- 
haps not  one  whose  frame  vibrated  more  strongly  than  his  to 
the  tones  and  words  of  the  preacher ;  but  it  had  vibrated  like 
a  harp  of  which  all  the  strings  had  been  wrenched  away  ex- 
cept one.  That  threat  of  a  fiery  inexorable  vengeance  —  of  a 
future  into  which  the  hated  sinner  might  be  pursued  and  held 
by  the  avenger  in  an  eternal  grapple,  had  come  to  him  like  the 
promise  of  an  unquenchable  fountain  to  unquenchable  thirst. 
The  doctrines  of  the  sages,  the  old  contempt  for  priestly 
superstitions,  had  fallen  away  from  his  soul  like  a  forgotten 
language :  if  he  could  have  remembered  them,  what  answer 
could  they  have  given  to  his  great  need  like  the  answer  given 
by  this  voice  of  energetic  conviction  ?  The  thunder  of  de- 
nunciation fell  on  his  passion-wrought  nerves  with  all  the 
force  of  self-evidence :  his  thought  never  went  beyond  it  into 
questions  —  he  was  possessed  by  it  as  the  war-horse  is  pos- 
sessed by  the  clash  of  sounds.  No  word  that  was  not  a  threat 
touched  his  consciousness ;  he  had  no  fibre  to  be  thrilled  by 
it.  But  the  fierce  exultant  delight  to  which  he  was  moved  by 
the  idea  of  perpetual  vengeance  found  at  once  a  climax  and  a 
relieving  outburst  in  the  preacher's  words  of  self-sacrifice. 
To  Baldassarre  those  words  only  brought  the  vague  triumph- 
ant sense  that  he  too  was  devoting  himself  —  signing  with 
his  own  blood  the  deed  by  which  he  gave  himself  over  to  an 
unending  fire,  that  would  seem  but  coolness  to  his  burning 
hatred. 

"  I  rescued  him  —  I  cherished  him  —  if  I  might  clutch  his 
heart-strings  forever !  Come,  0  blessed  promise !  Let  my 
blood  flow  ;  let  the  fire  consume  me  ! " 

The  one  cord  vibrated  to  its  utmost.  Baldassarre  clutched 
his  own  palms,  driving  his  long  nails  into  them,  and  burst 
into  a  sob  with  the  rest. 


212  ROMOLA. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

OUTSIDE    THE    DUOMO. 

While  Baldassarre  was  possessed  by  the  voice  of  Savonarola^ 
he  had  not  noticed  that  another  man  had  entered  through  the 
doorway  behind  him,  and  stood  not  far  off  observing  him.  It 
was  Piero  di  Cosimo,  wlio  took  no  heed  of  the  preaching,  hav- 
ing come  solely  to  look  at  the  escaped  prisoner.  During  the 
pause,  in  which  the  preacher  and  his  audience  had  given 
themselves  up  to  inarticulate  emotion,  the  new-comer  advanced 
and  touched  Baldassarre  on  the  arm.  He  looked  round 
with  the  tears  still  slowly  rolling  down  his  face,  but  with  a 
vigorous  sigh,  as  if  he  had  done  with  that  outburst.  The 
painter  spoke  to  him  in  a  low  tone,  — 

"  Shall  I  cut  your  cords  for  you  ?  I  have  heard  how  you 
were  made  prisoner." 

Baldassarre  did  not  reply  immediately;  he  glanced  suspi- 
ciously at  the  officious  stranger.  At  last  he  said,  "If  you 
will." 

"  Better  come  outside,"  said  Piero. 

Baldassarre  again  looked  at  him  suspiciously ;  and  Piero, 
partly  guessing  his  thought,  smiled,  took  out  a  knife,  and  cut 
the  cords.  He  began  to  think  that  the  idea  of  the  prisoner's 
madness  was  not  improbable,  there  was  something  so  peculiar 
in  the  expression  of  his  face.  "  Well,"  he  thought,  *'  if  he 
does  any  mischief,  he'll  soon  get  tied  up  again.  The  poor 
devil  shall  have  a  chance,  at  least." 

"  You  are  afraid  of  me,"  he  said  again,  in  an  undertone ; 
''  you  don't  want  to  tell  me  anything  about  yourself." 

Baldassarre  was  folding  his  arms  in  enjoyment  of  the  long- 
absent  muscular  sensation.  He  answered  Piero  with  a  less 
suspicious  look  and  a  tone  which  had  some  quiet  decision  in 
it. 

"  No,  I  have  nothing  to  tell." 

"  As  you  please,"  said  Piero,  "  but  perhaps  you  want  shelter, 
and  may  not  know  how  hospitable  we  Florentines  are  to  visit- 
ors with  torn  doublets  and  empty  stomachs.  There's  an 
hospital  for  poor  travellers  outside  all  our  gates,  and,  if  you 


OUTSIDE   THE  DUOMO.  213 

liked,  I  could  put  you  in  the  way  to  one.  There's  no  danger 
from  your  French  soldier.     He  has  been  sent  off." 

Baldassarre  nodded,  and  turned  in  silent  acceptance  of  the 
offer,  and  he  and  Piero  left  the  church  together. 

"  You  wouldn't  like  to  sit  to  me  for  your  portrait,  should 
you  ?  "  said  Piero,  as  they  went  along  the  Via  dell'  Oriuolo, 
on  the  way  to  the  gate  of  Santa  Croce.  "  I  am  a  painter :  I 
would  give  you  money  to  get  your  portrait." 

The  suspicion  returned  into  Baldassarre's  glance,  as  he 
looked  at  Piero,  and  said  decidedly,  "  No." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  the  painter,  curtly.  "  Well,  go  straight  on,  and 
you'll  find  the  Porta  Santa  Croce,  and  outside  it  there's  an 
hospital  for  travellers.  So  you'll  not  accept  any  service  from 
me  ?  " 

"  I  give  you  thanks  for  what  you  have  done  already.  I  need 
no  more." 

"  It  is  well,"  said  Piero,  with  a  shrug,  and  they  turned  away 
from  each  other. 

"  A  mysterious  old  tiger  !  "  thought  the  artist,  "  well  worth 
painting.  Ugly  —  with  deep  lines  —  looking  as  if  the  plough 
and  the  harrow  had  gone  over  his  heart.  A  fine  contrast  to  my 
bland  and  smiling  Messer  Greco  —  my  Bacco  trionfante,  who 
has  married  the  fair  Antigone  in  contradiction  to  all  history 
and  fitness.  Aha !  his  scholar's  blood  curdled  uncomfortably 
at  the  old  fellow's  clutch !'" 

When  Piero  re-entered  the  Piazza  del  Duomo  the  multitude 
who  had  been  listening  to  Fra  Girolamo  were  pouring  out  from 
all  the  doors,  and  the  haste  they  made  to  go  on  their  several 
ways  was  a  proof  how  important  they  held  the  preaching  which 
had  detained  them  from  the  other  occupations  of  the  day. 
The  artist  leaned  against  an  angle  of  the  Baptistery  and 
watched  the  departing  crowd,  delighting  in  the  variety  of  the 
garb  and  of  the  keen  characteristic  faces  —  faces  such  as 
Masaccio  had  painted  more  than  fifty  years  before  :  such  as 
Domenico  Ghirlandajo  had  not  yet  quite  left  off  painting. 

This  morning  was  a  peculiar  occasion,  and  the  Prate's 
audience,  always  multifarious,  had  represented  even  more 
completely  than  usual  the  various  classes  and  political  parties 
of  Florence.  There  were  men  of  high  birth,  accustomed  to 
public  charges  at  home  and  abroad,  who  had  become  newly 
conspicuous  not  only  as  enemies  of  the  Medici  and  friends  of 
popular  government,  but  as  thorough  Piagnoni,  espousing  to 
the  utmost  the  doctrines  and  practical  teaching  of  the  Frate, 
and  frequenting  San  Marco  as  the  seat  of   another  Samuel* 


214  ROMOLA. 

some  of  them  men  of  authoritative  and  handsome  presence, 
like  Francesco  Valori,  and  perhaps  also  of  a  hot  and  arrogant 
temper,  very  much  gratified  by  an  immediate  divine  authority 
for  bringing  about  freedom  in  their  own  way ;  others,  like 
Soderiui,  with  less  of  the  ardent  Piagnone,  and  more  of  the 
wise  politician.  There  were  men,  also  of  family,  like  Piero 
Capponi,  simply  brave  undoctrinal  lovers  of  a  sober  republican 
liberty,  who  preferred  fighting  to  arguing,  and  had  no  particu- 
lar reasons  for  thinking  any  ideas  false  that  kept  out  the 
Medici  and  made  room  for  public  spirit.  At  their  elbows 
were  doctors  of  law  whose  studies  of  Accursius  and  his 
brethren  had  not  so  entirely  consumed  their  ardor  as  to  prevent 
them  from  becoming  enthusiastic  Piagnoni :  Messer  Luca 
Corsini  himself,  for  example,  who  on  a  memorable  occasion 
yet  to  come  was  to  raise  his  learned  arms  in  street  stone- 
throwing  for  the  cause  of  religion,  freedom,  and  the  Frate. 
And  among  the  dignities  who  carried  their  black  lucco  or 
furred  mantle  with  an  air  of  habitual  authority,  there  was  an 
abundant  sprinkling  of  men  with  more  contemplative  and 
sensitive  faces :  scholars  inheriting  such  high  names  as 
Strozzi  and  Acciajoli,  who  were  already  minded  to  take  the 
cowl  and  join  the  community  of  San  Marco  ;  artists,  wrought 
to  a  new  and  higher  ambition  by  the  teaching  of  Savonarola, 
like  that  young  painter  who  had  lately  surpassed  himself  in 
his  fresco  of  the  divine  child  on  the  wall  of  the  Frate's  bare 
cell  —  unconscious  yet  that  he  would  one  day  himself  wear 
the  tonsure  and  the  cowl,  and  be  called  Fra  Bartolommeo. 
There  was  the  mystic  poet  Girolamo  Benevieni  hastening, 
perhaps,  to  carry  tidings  of  the  beloved  Frate's  speedy  coming 
to  his  friend  Pico  della  Mirandola,  who  was  never  to  see  the 
light  of  another  morning.  There  were  well-born  women 
attired  with  such  scrupulous  plainness  that  their  more  refined 
grace  was  the  chief  distinction  between  them  and  their  less 
aristocratic  sisters.  There  was  a  predominant  proportion  of 
the  genuine  poj^olani  or  middle  class,  belonging  both  to  the 
Major  and  Minor  Arts,  conscious  of  purses  threatened  by  war- 
taxes.  And  more  striking  and  various,  perhaps,  than  all  the 
other  classes  of  the  Frate's  disciples,  there  was  the  long 
stream  of  poorer  tradesmen  and  artisans,  whose  faith  and 
hope  in  his  Divine  message  varied  from  the  rude  and  undis- 
criminating  trust  in  liim  as  the  friend  of  the  poor  and  the 
enemy  of  the  luxurious  oppressive  rich,  to  that  eager  tasting 
of  all  the  subtleties  of  biblical  interpretation  which  takes  a 
peculiarly  strong  hold  on  the  sedentary  artisan,  illuminating 


OUTSIDE   THE  DUOMO.  215 

the  long  dim  spaces  beyond  the  board  where  he  stitches,  with 
a  pale  flame  that  seems  to  him  the  light  of  Divine  science. 

But  among  these  various  disciples  of  the  Frate  were 
scattered  many  who  were  not  in  the  least  his  disciples.  Some 
were  Mediceans  who  had  already,  from  motives  of  fear  and 
policy,  begun  to  show  the  presiding  spirit  of  the  popular  party 
a  feigned  deference.  Others  were  sincere  advocates  of  a  free 
government,  but  regarded  Savonarola  simply  as  an  ambitious 
monk  —  half  sagacious,  half  fanatical  —  who  had  made  him- 
self a  powerful  instrument  with  the  people,  and  must  be 
accepted  as  an  important  social  fact.  There  were  even  some 
of  his  bitter  enemies :  members  of  the  old  aristocratic  anti- 
Medicean  party  —  determined  to  try  and  get  the  reins  once 
more  tight  in  the  hands  of  certain  chief  families ;  or  else 
licentious  young  men,  who  detested  him  as  the  kill-joy  of 
Florence.  For  the  sermons  in  the  Duomo  had  already  become 
political  incidents,  attracting  the  ears  of  curiosity  and  malice, 
as  well  as  of  faith.  The  men  of  ideas,  like  young  Niccolo 
Macchiavelli,  went  to  observe  and  write  reports  to  friends 
away  in  country  villas  ;  the  men  of  appetites,  like  Dolfo  Spini, 
bent  on  hunting  down  the  Frate,  as  a  public  nuisance  who 
made  game  scarce,  went  to  feed  their  hatred  and  lie  in  wait 
for  grounds  of  accusation. 

Perhaps,  while  no  preacher  ever  had  a  more  massive  influence 
than  Savonarola,  no  preacher  ever  had  more  heterogeneous 
materials  to  work  upon.  And  one  secret  of  the  massive 
influence  lay  in  the  highly  mixed  character  of  his  preaching. 
Baldassarre,  wrought  into  an  ecstasy  of  self-martyring  revenge, 
was  only  an  extreme  case  among  the  partial  and  narrow 
sympathies  of  that  audience.  In  Savonarola's  preaching  there 
were  strains  that  appealed  to  the  very  finest  susceptibilities  of 
men's  natures,  and  there  were  elements  that  gratified  low 
egoism,  tickled  gossiping  curiosity,  and  fascinated  timorous 
superstition.  His  need  of  personal  predominance,  his  laby- 
rinthine allegorical  interpretations  of  the  Scriptures,  his 
enigmatic  visions,  and  his  false  certitude  about  the  Divine 
intentions,  never  ceased,  in  his  own  large  soul,  to  be  ennobled 
by  that  fervid  piety,  that  passionate  sense  of  the  infinite,  that 
active  sympathy,  that  clear-sighted  demand  for  the  subjection 
of  selfish  interests  to  the  general  good,  which  he  had  in  com- 
mon with  the  greatest  of  mankind.  But  for  the  mass  of  his 
audience  all  the  pregnancy  of  his  preaching  lay  in  his  strong 
assertion  of  supernatural  claims,  in  his  denunciatory  visions, 
in  the  false  certitude  which  gave  his  sermons  the  interest  of  a 


216  ROM0LA. 

political  bulletin ;  and  having  once  held  that  audience  in  his 
mastery,  it  was  necessary  to  his  nature  —  it  was  necessary  for 
their  welfare  —  that  he  should  keejj  the  mastery,  The  effect 
was  inevitable.  No  man  ever  struggled  to  retain  power  over  a 
mixed  multitude  without  suffering  vitiation ;  his  standard 
must  be  their  lower  needs  and  not  his  own  best  insight. 

The  mysteries  of  human  character  have  seldom  been 
presented  in  a  way  more  fitted  to  check  the  judgments  of 
facile  knowingness  than  in  Girolamo  Savonarola;  but  we  can 
give  him  a  reverence  that  needs  no  shutting  of  the  eyes  to  fact, 
if  we  regard  his  life  as  a  drama  in  which  there  were  great 
inward  modifications  accompanying  the  outward  changes.  And 
up  to  this  period,  when  his  more  direct  action  on  political 
affairs  had  only  just  begun,  it  is  probable  that  his  imperious 
need  of  ascendency  had  burned  undiscernibly  in  the  strong 
flame  of  his  zeal  for  God  and  man. 

It  was  the  fashion  of  old,  when  an  ox  was  led  out  for 
sacrifice  to  Jupiter,  to  chalk  the  dark  spots,  and  give  the 
offering  a  false  show  of  unblemished  whiteness.  Let  us  fling 
away  the  chalk,  and  boldly  say,  —  the  victim  is  spotted,  but  it 
is  not  therefore  in  vain  that  his  mighty  heart  is  laid  on  the 
altar  of  men's  highest  hopes. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE    GARMENT    OF    FEAR. 

At  six  o'clock  that  evening  most  people  in  Florence  were 
glad  the  entrance  of  the  new  Charlemagne  was  fairly  over. 
Doubtless  when  the  roll  of  drums,  the  blast  of  trumpets,  and 
the  tramp  of  horses  along  the  Pisan  road  began  to  mingle 
with  the  pealing  of  the  excited  bells,  it  was  a  grand  moment 
for  those  who  were  stationed  on  turreted  roofs,  and  could  see 
the  long-winding  terrible  pomp  on  the  background  of  the 
green  hills  and  valley.  There  was  no  sunshine  to  light  up 
the  splendor  of  banners,  and  spears,  and  plumes,  and  silken  sur- 
coats,  but  there  was  no  thick  cloud  of  dust  to  hide  it,  and  as  the 
picked  troops  advanced  into  close  view,  they  could  be  seen  all 
the  more  distinctly  for  the  absence  of  dancing  glitter.  Tall 
and  tough  Scotch  archers,  Swiss  halberdiers  fierce  and  pon- 
derous, nimble  Gascons  ready  to  wheel  and  climb,  cavalry  in 


THE   GARMENT  OF  FEAR.  217 

which  each  man  looked  like  a  knight-errant  with  his  indomi- 
table spear  and  charger  —  it  was  satisfactory  to  be  assured 
that  they  would  injure  nobody  but  the  enemies  of  God! 
With  that  confidence  at  heart  it  was  a  less  dubious  pleasure  to 
look  at  the  array  of  strength  and  splendor  in  nobles  and 
knights,  and  youthful  pages  of  choice  lineage  — at  the  bossed 
and  jewelled  sword-hilts,  at  the  satin  scarfs  embroidered  with 
strange  symbolical  devices  of  pious  or  gallant  meaning,  at  the 
gold  chains  and  jewelled  aigrettes,  at  the  gorgeous  horse- 
trappings  and  brocaded  mantles,  and  at  the  transcendent 
canopy  carried  by  select  youths  above  the  head  of  the  Most 
Christian  King.  To  sum  up  with  an  old  diarist,  whose  spell- 
ing and  diction  halted  a  little  behind  the  wonders  of  this  royal 
visit,  —  "/m  gran  tnagnificenzaP 

But  for  the  Signoria,  who  had  been  waiting  on  their  plat- 
form against  the  gates,  and  had  to  march  out  at  the  right 
moment,  with  their  orator  in  front  of  them,  to  meet  the 
mighty  guest,  the  grandeur  of  the  scene  had  been  somewhat 
screened  by  unpleasant  sensations.  If  Messer  Luca  Corsini 
could  have  had  a  brief  Latin  welcome  depending  from  his 
mouth  in  legible  characters,  it  would  have  been  less  confusing 
when  the  rain  came  on,  and  created  an  impatience  in  men  and 
horses  that  broke  off  the  delivery  of  his  well-studied  periods, 
and  reduced  the  representatives  of  the  scholarly  city  to  offer 
a  makeshift  welcome  in  impromptu  French.  But  that  sudden 
confusion  had  created  a  great  opportunity  for  Tito.  As  one 
of  the  secretaries,  he  was  among  the  officials  who  were 
stationed  behind  the  Signoria,  and  with  whom  these  highest 
dignities  were  promiscuously  thrown  when  pressed  upon  by 
the  horses. 

"  Somebody  step  forward  and  say  a  few  words  in  French," 
said  Soderini.  But  no  one  of  high  importance  chose  to  risk  a 
second  failure.  "You,  Francesco  Gaddi  —  you  can  speak." 
But  Gaddi,  distrusting  his  own  promptness,  hung  back,  and, 
pushing  Tito,  said,  "  You,  Melema." 

Tito  stepped  forward  in  an  instant,  and,  with  the  air  of 
profound  deference  that  came  as  naturally  to  him  as  walking, 
said  the  few  needful  words  in  the  name  of  the  Signoria ;  then 
gave  way  gracefully,  and  let  the  king  pass  on.  His  presence 
of  mind,  which  had  failed  him  in  the  terrible  crisis  of  the 
morning,  had  been  a  ready  instrument  this  time.  It  was  an 
excellent  livery  servant  that  never  forsook  him  when  danger 
was  not  visible.  But  when  he  was  complimented  on  his 
opportune  service,  he  laughed  it  off  as  a  thing  of  no  moment, 


218  ROMOLA. 

and  to  those  who  had  not  witnessed  it,  let  Gaddi  have  the 
credit  of  the  improvised  welcome.  No  wonder  Tito  was 
popular ;  the  touchstone  by  which  men  try  us  is  most  often 
their  own  vanity. 

Other  things  besides  the  oratorical  welcome  had  turned  out 
rather  worse  than  had  been  expected.  If  everything  had 
happened  according  to  ingenious  preconceptions,  the  Floren- 
tine procession  of  clergy  and  laity  would  not  have  found  their 
way  choked  up,  and  been  obliged  to  take  a  make-shift  course 
through  the  back  streets,  so  as  to  meet  the  king  at  the  Catlie 
dral  only.  Also,  if  the  young  monarch  under  the  canopy, 
seated  on  his  charger  with  his  lance  upon  his  thigh,  had 
looked  more  like  a  Charlemagne  and  less  like  a  hastily 
modelled  grotesque,  tlie  imagination  of  his  admirers  would 
have  been  much  assisted.  It  might  have  been  wished  that 
the  scourge  of  Italian  wickedness  and  "  Champion  of  the 
honor  of  women"  had  had  a  less  miserable  leg,  and  only  the 
normal  sum  of  toes ;  that  his  mouth  had  been  of  a  less 
reptilian  width  of  slifc,  his  nose  and  head  of  a  less  exorbitant 
outline.  But  the  thin  leg  rested  on  cloth  of  gold  and  pearls, 
and  the  face  was  only  an  interruption  of  a  few  square  inches 
in  the  midst  of  black  velvet  and  gold,  and  the  blaze  of  rubies, 
and  the  brilliant  tints  of  the  embroidered  and  bepearled 
canopy  —  "fu  gran  maynijicenzaP 

And  the  people  had  cried  Francia,  Frmicia  !  with  an  enthu- 
siasm proportioned  to  the  splendor  of  the  canopy  which  they 
had  torn  to  pieces  as  their  spoil,  according  to  immemorial 
custom ;  royal  lips  had  duly  kissed  the  altar ;  and  after  all 
mischances  the  royal  person  and  retinue  were  lodged  in  the 
Palace  of  the  Via  Larga,  the  rest  of  the  nobles  and  gentry 
were  dispersed  among  the  great  houses  of  Florence,  and  the 
terrible  soldiery  were  encamped  in  the  Prato  and  other  open 
quarters.     The  business  of  the  day  was  ended. 

But  the  streets  still  presented  a  surprising  aspect,  such  as 
Florentines  had  not  seen  before  under  the  November  stars. 
Instead  of  a  gloom  unbroken  except  by  a  lamp  burning 
feebly  here  and  there  before  a  saintly  image  at  the  street 
corners,  or  by  a  stream  of  redder  light  from  an  open  doorway, 
there  were  lamps  suspended  at  the  windows  of  all  houses,  so 
that  men  could  walk  along  no  less  securely  and  commodiously 
than  by  day,  —  "/m  gran  magnificenza." 

Along  those  illuminated  streets  Tito  Melema  was  walking 
at  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening,  on  his  way  homeward. 
He  had  been  exerting  himself  throughout  the  day  under  the 


THE  GARMENT  OF  FEAR.  219 

pressure  of  hidden  anxieties,  and  had  at  last  made  his  escape 
unnoticed  from  the  midst  of  after-supper  gayety.  Once  at 
leisure  thoroughly  to  face  and  consider  his  circumstances,  he 
hoped  that  he  could  so  adjust  himself  to  them  and  to  all 
probabilities  as  to  get  rid  of  his  childish  fear.  If  he  had 
only  not  been  wanting  in  the  presence  of  mind  necessary 
to  recognize  Baldassarre  under  that  surprise !  —  it  would 
have  been  happier  for  him  on  all  accounts  ;  for  he  still  winced 
under  the  sense  that  he  was  deliberately  inflicting  suffering 
on  his  father :  he  would  very  much  have  preferred  that 
Baldassarre  should  be  prosperous  and  happy.  But  he  had  left 
himself  no  second  path  now  :  there  could  be  no  conflict  any 
longer :  the  only  thing  he  had  to  do  was  to  take  care  of  himself. 

While  these  thoughts  were  in  his  mind  he  was  advancing 
from  the  Piazza  di  Santa  Croce  along  the  Via  dei  Benci,  and 
as  he  neared  the  angle  turning  into  the  Borgo  Santa  Croce 
his  ear  was  struck  by  a  music  which  was  not  that  of  evening 
revelry,  but  of  vigorous  labor  —  the  music  of  the  anvil.  Tito 
gave  a  slight  start  and  quickened  his  pace,  for  the  sounds 
had  suggested  a  welcome  thought.  He  knew  that  they  came 
from  the  workshop  of  Niccolo  Caparra,  famous  resort  of  all 
Florentines  who  cared  for  curious  and  beautiful  iron-work. 

"  What  makes  the  giant  at  work  so  late  ? ''  thought  Tito. 
"  But  so  much  the  better  for  me.  I  can  do  that  little  bit  of 
business  to-night  instead  of  to-morrow  morning." 

Pre-occupied  as  he  was,  he  could  not  help  pausing  a  moment 
in  admiration  as  he  came  in  front  of  the  workshop.  The 
wide  doorway,  standing  at  the  truncated  angle  of  a  great 
block  or  "  isle  "  of  houses,  was  surmounted  by  a  loggia  roofed 
with  fluted  tiles,  and  supported  by  stone  columns  with  roughly 
carved  capitals.  Against  the  red  light  framed  in  by  the  out- 
line of  the  fluted  tiles  and  columns  stood  in  black  relief  the 
grand  figure  of  Xiccolo,  with  his  huge  arms  in  rhythmic  rise 
and  fall,  first  hiding  and  then  disclosing  the  profile  of  his  firm 
mouth  and  powerful  brow.  Two  slighter  ebony  figures,  one 
at  the  anvil,  the  other  at  the  bellows,  served  to  set  off  his 
superior  massiveness. 

Tito  darkened  the  doorway  with  a  very  different  outline, 
standing  in  silence,  since  it  was  useless  to  speak  until  Niccol6 
should  deign  to  pause  and  notice  him.  That  was  not  until 
the  smith  had  beaten  the  head  of  an  axe  to  the  due  sharpness 
of  edge  and  dismissed  it  from  his  anvil.  But  in  the  mean 
time  Tito  had  satisfied  himself  by  a  glance  round  the  shop 
that  the  object  of  which  he  was  in  search  had  not  disap- 
peared. 


220  ROMOLA. 

Niccol6  gave  an  unceremonious  but  good-humored  nod  as  he 
turned  from  the  anvil  and  rested  his  hammer  on  his  hip. 

"  What  is  it,  Messer  Tito  ?     Business  ?  " 

"  Assuredly,  Niccolo ;  else  I  should  not  have  ventured  to 
interrupt  you  when  you  are  working  out  of  hours,  since  I  take 
that  as  a  sign  that  your  work  is  pressing." 

"  I've  been  at  the  same  work  all  day  —  making  axes  and 
spear-heads.  And  every  fool  that  has  passed  my  shop  has 
put  his  pumpkin-head  in  to  say,  '  Niccolo,  wilt  thou  not  come 
and  see  the  King  of  France  and  his  soldiers  ? '  and  I've 
answered,  '  No  :  I  don't  want  to  see  their  faces  —  I  want  to 
see  their  backs.'  " 

"Are  3'ou  making  arms  for  the  citizens,  then,  Niccolo,  that 
they  may  have  something  better  than  rusty  scythes  and  spits 
in  case  of  an  uproar  ?  " 

"  We  shall  see.  Arms  are  good,  and  Florence  is  likely  to 
want  them.  The  Frate  tells  us  we  shall  get  Pisa  again,  and  I 
hold  with  the  Frate  ;  but  I  should  be  glad  to  know  how  the 
promise  is  to  be  fulfilled,  if  we  don't  get  plenty  of  good 
weapons  forged  ?  The  Frate  sees  a  long  way  before  him ; 
that  I  believe.  But  he  doesn't  see  birds  caught  with  winking 
at  them,  as  some  of  our  people  try  to  make  out.  He  sees 
sense,  and  not  nonsense.  But  you're  a  bit  of  a  Medicean, 
Messer  Tito  Melema.  Ebbene  !  so  I've  been  myself  in  my 
time,  before  the  cask  began  to  run  sour.  What's  your  busi- 
ness ?  " 

"  Simply  to  know  the  price  of  that  fine  coat  of  mail  I  saw 
hanging  up  here  the  other  day.  I  want  to  buy  it  for  a  certain 
personage  who  needs  a  protection  of  that  sort  under  his 
doublet." 

"  Let  him  come  and  buy  it  himself,  then,"  said  Niccolo, 
bluntly.  "I'm  rather  nice  about  what  I  sell,  and  whom  I 
sell  to.     I  like  to  know  who's  my  customer." 

"  I  know  your  scruples,  Niccolo.  But  that  is  only  defensive 
armor  :  it  can  hurt  nobody." 

"  True  :  but  it  may  make  the  man  who  wears  it  feel  himself 
all  the  safer  if  he  should  want  to  hurt  somebody.  No,  no; 
it's  not  my  own  work  ;  but  it's  fine  work  of  Maso  of  Brescia ; 
I  should  be  loath  for  it  to  cover  the  heart  of  a  scoundrel.  I 
must  know  who  is  to  wear  it." 

"Well,  then,  to  be  plain  with  you,  Niccol6  mio,  I  want  it 
myself,"  said  Tito,  knowing  it  was  useless  to  try  persuasion. 
"The  fact  is,  I  am  likely  to  have  a  journey  to  take  —  and 
you  know  what  journeying  is  in  these  times.  You  don't  sus- 
pect vie  of  treason  against  the  Republic  ?  " 


THE    YOUNG    WIFE.  221 

"  No,  I  know  no  harm  of  you,"  said  ]Sriccol6,  in  his  blunt 
way  again.  "  But  have  you  the  money  to  pay  for  the  coat  ? 
For  you've  passed  ray  shop  often  enough  to  know  my  sign : 
you've  seen  the  burning  account-books.  I  trust  nobody.  The 
price  is  twenty  florins,  and  that's  because  it's  second-hand. 
You're  not  likely  to  have  so  much  money  with  you.  Let  it  be 
till  to-morrow." 

"  I  happen  to  have  the  money,"  said  Tito,  who  had  been 
winning  at  play  the  day  before,  and  had  not  emptied  his  purse. 
"  I'll  carry  the  armor  home  with  me." 

Niccol6  reached  down  the  finely  wrought  coat,  which  fell 
together  into  little  more  than  two  handfuls. 

"  There,  then,"  he  said,  when  the  florins  had  been  told 
down  on  his  palm.  "Take  the  coat.  It's  made  to  cheat 
sword,  or  poniard,  or  arrow.  But,  for  my  part,  I  would  never 
put  such  a  thing  on.     It's  like  carrying  fear  about  with  one." 

Niccolo's  words  had  an  unpleasant  intensity  of  meaning  for 
Tito.     But  he  smiled  and  said,  — 

"  Ah,  Niccolo,  we  scholars  are  all  cowards.  Handling  the 
pen  doesn't  thicken  the  arm  as  your  hammer-wielding  does. 
Addio ! " 

He  folded  the  armor  under  his  mantle,  and  hastened  across 
the  Ponte  Rubaconte. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE    YOUNG    WIFE. 

While  Tito  was  hastening  across  the  bridge  with  the  new- 
bought  armor  under  his  mantle,  Romola  was  pacing  up  and 
down  the  old  library,  thinking  of  him  and  longing  for  his 
return. 

It  was  but  a  few  fair  faces  that  had  not  looked  forth  from 
windows  that  day  to  see  the  entrance  of  the  French  king  and 
his  nobles.  One  of  the  few  was  Romola's.  She  had  been 
present  at  no  festivities  since  her  father  had  died  —  died 
quite  suddenly  in  his  chair,  three  months  before. 

"  Is  not  Tito  coming  to  write  ?  "  he  had  said,  when  the  bell 
had  long  ago  sounded  the  usual  hour  in  the  evening.  He  had 
not  asked  before,  from  dread  of  a  negative ;  but  Romola  had 
seen  by  his  listening  face  and  restless  movements  that  nothing 
else  was  in  his  mind. 


222  ROMOLA. 

"No,  father,  he  had  to  go  to  a  supper  at  the  cardinal's  :  you 
know  he  is  wanted  so  raueh  by  every  one,"  she  answered  in  a 
tone  of  gentle  excuse. 

"  Ah !  then  perhaps  he  will  bring  some  positive  word  about 
the  library ;  the  cardinal  promised  last  week,"  said  Bardo, 
apparently  pacified  by  this  hope. 

He  was  silent  a  little  while ;  then,  suddenly  flushing,  he 
said,  — 

"  I  must  go  on  without  him,  Romola.  Get  the  pen.  He  has 
brought  me  no  new  text  to  comment  on  ;  but  I  must  say  what 
I  want  to  say  about  the  New  Platonists.  I  shall  die  and 
nothing  will  have  been  done.     Make  haste,  my  Romola." 

"  I  am  ready,  father,"  she  said,  the  next  minute,  holding  the 
pen  in  her  hand. 

But  there  was  silence.  Romola  took  no  note  of  this  for  a 
little  while,  accustomed  to  pauses  in  dictation  ;  and  when  at 
last  she  looked  round  inquiringly,  there  was  no  change  of 
attitude. 

"  I  am  quite  ready,  father !  " 

Still  Bardo  was  silent,  and  his  silence  was  never  again 
broken. 

Romola  looked  back  on  that  hour  with  some  indignation 
against  herself,  because  even  with  the  first  outburst  of  her 
sorrow  there  had  mingled  the  irrepressible  thought, ''  Perhaps 
my  life  with  Tito  will  be  more  perfect  now." 

For  the  dream  of  a  triple  life  with  an  undivided  sum  of 
happiness  had  not  been  quite  fulfilled.  The  rainbow-tinted 
shower  of  sweets,  to  have  been  perfectly  typical,  should  have 
had  some  invisible  seeds  of  bitterness  mingled  with  them ; 
the  crowned  Ariadne,  under  the  snowing  roses,  had  felt  more 
and  more  the  presence  of  unexpected  thorns.  It  was  not 
Tito's  fault,  Romola  had  continually  assured  herself.  He  was 
still  all  gentleness  to  her,  and  to  her  father  also.  But  it  was 
in  the  nature  of  things  —  she  saw  it  clearly  now  —  it  was  in 
the  nature  of  things  that  no  one  but  herself  could  go  on 
month  after  month,  and  year  after  year,  fulfilling  patiently  all 
her  father's  monotonous  exacting  demands.  Even  she,  whose 
sympathy  with  her  father  had  made  all  the  passion  and  relig- 
ion of  her  young  years,  had  not  always  been  patient,  had  been 
inwardly  very  rebellious.  It  was  true  that  before  their  mar- 
riage, and  even  for  some  time  after,  Tito  had  seemed  more 
unwearying  than  herself ;  but  then,  of  course,  the  effort  had 
the  ease  of  novelty.  We  assume  a  load  with  confident  readi- 
ness, and  up  to  a  certain  point  the  growing  irksomeness  of 


THE    YOUNG    WIFE.  223 

pressure  is  tolerable  ;  but  at  last  the  desire  for  relief  can  no 
longer  be  resisted.  Romola  said  to  herself  that  she  had  been 
very  foolish  and  ignorant  in  her  girlish  time  :  she  was  wiser 
now,  and  would  make  no  unfair  demands  on  the  man  to  whom 
she  had  given  her  best  woman's  love  and  worship.  The 
breath  of  sadness  that  still  cleaved  to  her  lot  while  she  saw 
her  father  month  after  month  sink  from  elation  into  new  dis- 
appointment as  Tito  gave  him  less  and  less  of  his  time,  and 
made  bland  excuses  for  not  continuing  his  own  share  of  the 
joint  work  —  that  sadness  was  no  fault  of  Tito's,  she  said,  but 
rather  of  their  inevitable  destiny.  If  he  stayed  less  and  less  with 
her,  why,  that  was  because  they  could  hardly  ever  be  alone. 
His  caresses  were  no  less  tender :  if  she  pleaded  timidly  on 
any  one  evening  that  he  should  stay  with  her  father  instead 
of  going  to  another  engagement  which  was  not  peremptory, 
he  excused  himself  with  such  charming  gayety,  he  seemed  to 
linger  about  her  with  such  fond  playfulness  before  he  could 
quit  her,  that  she  could  only  feel  a  little  heartache  in  the 
midst  of  her  love,  and  then  go  to  her  father  and  try  to  soften 
his  vexation  and  disappointment.  But  all  the  while  inwardly 
her  imagination  was  busy  trying  to  see  how  Tito  could  be  as 
good  as  she  had  thought  he  was,  and  yet  find  it  impossible  to 
sacrifice  those  pleasures  of  society  which  were  necessarily 
more  vivid  to  a  bright  creature  like  him  than  to  the  common 
run  of  men.  She  herself  would  have  liked  more  gayety,  more 
admiration :  it  was  true,  she  gave  it  up  willingly  for  her 
father's  sake  —  she  would  have  given  up  much  more  than  that 
for  the  sake  even  of  a  slight  wish  on  Tito's  part.  It  was 
clear  that  their  natures  differed  widely ;  but  perhaps  it  was  no 
more  than  the  inherent  difference  between  man  and  woman, 
that  made  her  affections  more  absorbing.  If  there  were  any 
other  difference  she  tried  to  persuade  herself  that  the  in- 
feriority was  on  her  side.  Tito  was  really  kinder  than  she 
was,  better  tempered,  less  proud  and  resentful :  he  had  no 
angry  retorts,  he  met  all  complaints  with  perfect  sweetness  ; 
he  only  escaped  as  quietly  as  he  could  from  things  that  were 
unpleasant. 

It  belongs  to  every  large  nature,  when  it  is  not  under  the 
immediate  power  of  some  strong  unquestioning  emotion,  to 
suspect  itself,  and  doubt  the  truth  of  its  own  impressions,  con- 
scious of  possibilities  beyond  its  own  horizon.  And  Romola 
was  urged  to  doubt  herself  the  more  by  the  necessity  of  inter- 
preting her  disappointment  in  her  life  with  Tito  so  as  to  sat- 
isfy at  once  her  love  and  her  pride.     Disappointment  ?     Yes, 


224  ROMOLA. 

there  was  no  other  milder  word  that  would  tell  the  truth. 
Perhaps  all  women  had  to  suffer  the  disappointment  of  igno- 
rant hopes,  if  she  only  knew  their  experience.  Still,  there  had 
been  something  peculiar  in  her  lot :  her  relation  to  her  father 
had  claimed  unusual  sacrifices  from  her  husband.  Tito  had 
once  thought  that  his  love  would  make  those  sacrifices  easy ; 
his  love  had  not  been  great  enough  for  that.  She  was  not 
justified  in  resenting  a  self-delusion.  No  !  resentment  must 
not  rise :  all  endurance  seemed  easy  to  Romola  rather  than  a 
state  of  mind  in  which  she  would  admit  to  herself  that  Tito 
acted  unworthily.  If  she  had  felt  a  new  heartache  in  the  sol- 
itary hours  with  her  father  through  the  last  months  of  his  life, 
it  had  been  by  no  inexcusable  fault  of  her  husband's  ;  and  now 
—  it  was  a  hope  that  would  make  its  presence  felt  even  in  the 
first  moments  when  her  father's  place  was  empty  —  there  was 
no  longer  any  importunate  claim  to  divide  her  from  Tito ;  their 
young  lives  would  flow  in  one  current,  and  their  true  marriage 
would  begin. 

But  the  sense  of  something  like  guilt  towards  her  father  in 
a  hope  that  grew  out  of  his  death,  gave  all  the  more  force  to  the 
anxiety  with  which  she  dwelt  on  the  means  of  fulfilling  his 
supreme  wish.  That  piety  towards  his  memory  was  all  the 
atonement  she  could  make  now  for  a  thought  that  seemed  akin 
to  joy  at  his  loss.  The  laborious  simple  life,  pure  from  vulgar 
corrupting  ambitions,  embittered  by  the  frustration  of  the 
dearest  hopes,  imprisoned  at  last  in  total  darkness  —  a  long 
seed-time  without  a  harvest  —  was  at  an  end  now,  and  all  that 
remained  of  it  besides  the  tablet  in  Santa  Croce  and  the  unfin- 
ished commentary  on  Tito's  text,  was  the  collection  of  manu- 
scripts and  antiquities,  the  fruit  of  half  a  century's  toil  and 
frugality.  The  fulfilment  of  her  father's  lifelong  ambition 
about  this  library  was  a  sacramental  obligation  for  Romola. 

The  precious  relic  was  safe  from  creditors,  for  when  the  defi- 
cit towards  their  payment  had  been  ascertained,  Bernardo  del 
Nero,  though  he  was  far  from  being  among  the  wealthiest 
Florentines,  had  advanced  the  necessary  sum  of  about  a  thou- 
sand florins  —  a  large  sum  in  those  days  —  accepting  a  lien  on 
the  collection  as  a  security. 

"  The  State  will  repay  me,''  he  had  said  to  Romola,  making 
light  of  the  service,  which  had  really  cost  him  some  inconven- 
ience. "  If  the  cardinal  finds  a  building,  as  he  seems  to  say  he 
will,  our  Signoria  may  consent  to  do  the  rest.  I  have  no  chil- 
dren, I  can  afford  the  risk." 

But  within  the  last  ten  days  all  hopes  in  the  Medici  had  come 


THE   YOUNG    WIFE.  225 

to  an  end:  and  the  famous  Medicean  collections  in  the  Via 
Larga  were  themselves  in  danger  of  dispersion.  French  agents 
had  already  begun  to  see  that  such  very  fine  antique  gems  as 
Lorenzo  had  collected  belonged  by  right  to  the  first  nation  in 
Europe  ;  and  the  Florentine  State,  which  had  got  possession  of 
the  Medicean  library,  was  likely  to  be  glad  of  a  customer  for  it. 
With  a  war  to  recover  Pisa  hanging  over  it,  and  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  having  to  pay  large  subsidies  to  the  French  king,  the 
State  was  likely  to  prefer  money  to  manuscripts. 

To  Romola  these  grave  political  changes  had  gathered  their 
chief  interest  from  their  bearing  on  the  fulfilment  of  her  fath- 
er's wish.  She  had  been  brought  up  in  learned  seclusion  from 
the  interests  of  actual  life,  and  had  been  accustomed  to  think 
of  heroic  deeds  and  great  principles  as  something  antithetic  to 
the  vulgar  present,  of  the  Pnyx  and  the  Forum  as  something 
more  worthy  of  attention  than  the  councils  of  living  Florentine 
men.  And  now  the  expulsion  of  the  Medici  meant  little  more 
for  her  than  the  extinction  of  her  best  hope  about  her  father's 
library.  The  times,  she  knew,  were  unpleasant  for  friends  of 
the  Medici,  like  her  god-father  and  Tito :  superstitious  shop- 
keepers and  the  stupid  rabble  were  full  of  suspicions  ;  but  her 
new  keen  interest  in  public  events,  in  the  outbreak  of  war,  in 
the  issue  of  the  French  king's  visit,  in  the  changes  that  were 
likely  to  happen  in  the  State,  was  kindled  solely  by  the  sense 
of  love  and  duty  to  her  father's  memory.  All  Romola's 
ardor  had  been  concentrated  in  her  affections.  Her  share  in 
her  father's  learned  pursuits  had  been  for  her  little  more  than 
a  toil  which  was  borne  for  his  sake ;  and  Tito's  airy  brilliant 
faculty  had  no  attraction  for  her  that  was  not  merged  in  the 
deeper  sympathies  that  belong  to  young  love  and  trust. 
Romola  had  had  contact  with  no  mind  that  could  stir  the 
larger  possibilities  of  her  nature  ;  they  lay  folded  and  crushed 
like  embryonic  wings,  making  no  element  in  her  consciousness 
beyond  an  occasional  vague  uneasiness. 

But  this  new  personal  interest  of  hers  in  public  affairs  had 
made  her  care  at  last  to  understand  precisely  what  influence 
Fra  Girolamo's  preaching  was  likely  to  have  on  the  turn  of 
events.  Changes  in  the  form  of  the  State  were  talked  of,  and 
all  she  could  learn  from  Tito,  whose  secretaryship  and  service- 
able talents  carried  him  into  the  heart  of  public  business, 
made  her  only  the  more  eager  to  fill  out  her  lonely  day  by 
going  to  hear  for  herself  what  it  was  that  was  just  now  lead- 
ing all  Florence  by  the  ears.  This  morning,  for  the  first  time, 
she  had  been    to   hear   one  of   the   Advent    sermons   in    the 


226  ROMOLA. 

Duomo.  When  Tito  had  left  her,  she  had  formed  a  sudden 
resolution,  and  after  visiting  the  spot  where  her  father  was 
buried  in  Santa  Croce,  had  walked  on  to  the  Duomo.  The  mem- 
ory of  that  last  scene  with  Dino  was  still  vivid  within  her 
whenever  she  recalled  it,  but  it  had  receded  behind  the  experi- 
ence and  anxieties  of  her  married  life.  The  new  sensibilities 
and  questions  which  it  had  half  awakened  in  her  were  quieted 
again  by  that  subjection  to  her  husband's  mind  which  is  fell 
by  every  wife  who  loves  her  husband  with  passionate  devoted- 
ness  and  full  reliance.  She  remembered  the  effect  of  Fra 
Girolamo's  voice  and  presence  on  her  as  a  ground  for  expect- 
ing that  his  sermon  might  move  her  in  spite  of  his  being  a  nar- 
row-minded monk.  But  the  sermon  did  no  more  than  slightly 
deepen  her  previous  impression,  that  this  fanatical  preacher  of 
tribulations  was  after  all  a  man  towards  whom  it  might  be 
possible  for  her  to  feel  personal  regard  and  reverence.  The 
denunciations  and  exhortations  simply  arrested  her  attention. 
She  felt  no  terror,  no  pangs  of  conscience  :  it  was  the  roll  of 
distant  thunder,  that  seemed  grand,  but  could  not  shake  her. 
But  when  she  heard  Savonarola  invoke  martyrdom,  she  sobbed 
with  the  rest :  she  felt  herself  penetrated  with  a  new  sensa- 
tion—  a  strange  sympathy  with  something  apart  from  all  the 
definable  interests  of  her  life.  It  was  not  altogether  unlike 
the  thrill  which  had  accompanied  certain  rare  heroic  touches 
in  history  and  poetry  ;  but  the  resemblance  was  as  that  between 
the  memory  of  music,  and  the  sense  of  being  possessed  by 
actual  vibrating  harmonies. 

But  that  transient  emotion,  strong  as  it  was,  seemed  to  lie 
quite  outside  the  inner  chamber  and  sanctuary  of  her  life. 
She  was  not  thinking  of  Fra  Girolamo  now ;  she  was  listening 
anxiously  for  the  step  of  her  husband.  During  these  three 
months  of  their  double  solitude  she  had  thought  of  each  day 
as  an  epoch  in  which  their  union  might  begin  to  be  more  per- 
fect. She  was  conscious  of  being  sometimes  a  little  too  sad  or 
too  urgent  about  what  concerned  her  father's  memory  — a  lit- 
tle too  critical  or  coldly  silent  when  Tito  narrated  the  things 
that  were  said  and  done  in  the  world  he  frequented  —  a  little 
too  hasty  in  suggesting  that  by  living  quite  simply  as  her 
father  had  done,  they  might  become  rich  enough  to  pay  Ber- 
nardo del  Nero,  and  reduce  the  difficulties  about  the  library. 
It  was  not  possible  that  Tito  could  feel  so  strongly  on  this 
last  point  as  she  did,  and  it  was  asking  a  great  deal  from  him 
to  give  up  luxuries  for  which  he  really  labored.  The  next  time 
Tito  came  home  she  would  be  careful  to  suppress  all  those 


THE    YOUNG    WIFE.  227 

promptings  that  seemed  to  isolate  her  from  him.  Romola  was 
laboring,  as  a  loving  woman  must,  to  subdue  her  nature  to  her 
husband's.  The  great  need  of  her  heart  compelled  her  to 
strangle,  with  desperate  resolution,  every  rising  impulse  of 
suspicion,  pride,  and  resentment ;  she  felt  equal  to  any  self- 
infliction  that  would  save  her  from  ceasing  to  love.  That 
would  have  been  like  the  hideous  nightmare  in  which  the 
world  had  seemed  to  break  away  all  round  her,  and  leave  her  feet 
overhanging  the  darkness.  Romola  had  never  distinctly  imag- 
ined such  a  future  for  herself ;  she  was  only  beginning  to  feel 
the  presence  of  effort  in  that  clinging  trust  which  had  once 
been  mere  repose. 

She  waited  and  listened  long,  for  Tito  had  not  come 
straight  home  after  leaving  Niccolo  Caparra,  and  it  was  more 
than  two  hours  after  the  time  when  he  was  crossing  the  Ponte 
Rubaconte  that  Romola  heard  the  great  door  of  the  court 
turning  on  its  hinges,  and  hastened  to  the  head  of  the  stone 
steps.  There  was  a  lamp  hanging  over  the  stairs,  and  they 
could  see  each  other  distinctly  as  he  ascended.  The  eighteen 
months  had  produced  a  more  definable  change  in  Romola's 
face  than  in  Tito's ;  the  expression  was  more  subdued,  less 
cold,  and  more  beseeching,  and,  as  the  pink  flush  overspread 
her  face  now,  in  her  joy  that  the  long  waiting  was  at  an  end, 
she  was  much  lovelier  than  on  the  day  when  Tito  had  first 
seen  her.  On  that  day,  any  on-looker  would  have  said  that 
Romola's  nature  was  made  to  command,  and  Tito's  to  bend ; 
yet  now  Romola's  mouth  was  quivering  a  little,  and  there  was 
some  timidity  in  her  glance. 

He  made  an  effort  to  smile,  as  she  said,  — 

"  My  Tito,  you  are  tired ;  it  has  been  a  fatiguing  day  :  is  it 
not  true  ?  " 

Maso  was  there,  and  no  more  was  said  until  they  had 
crossed  the  ante-chamber  and  closed  the  door  of  the  library 
behind  them.  The  wood  was  burning  brightly  on  the  great 
dogs  ;  that  was  one  welcome  for  Tito,  late  as  he  was,  and 
Romola's  gentle  voice  was  another. 

He  just  turned  and  kissed  her  when  she  took  off  his 
mantle  ;  then  he  went  towards  a  high-backed  chair  placed  for 
him  near  the  fire,  threw  himself  into  it,  and  flung  away  his 
cap,  saying,  not  peevishly,  but  in  a  fatigued  tone  of  remon- 
strance, as  he  gave  a  slight  shudder,  — 

"  Romola,  I  wish  you  would  give  up  sitting  in  this  library. 
Surely  our  own  rooms  are  pleasanter  in  this  chill  weather." 

Romola  felt  hurt.     She  had  never  seen  Tito  so  indifferent 


228  ROMOLA. 

in  his  manner ;  he  was  usually  full  of  lively  solicitous  atten- 
tion. And  she  had  thought  so  much  of  his  return  to  her  after 
the  long  day's  absence  !     He  must  be  very  weary. 

"  I  wonder  you  have  forgotten,  Tito,"  she  answered,  looking 
at  him  anxiously,  as  if  she  wanted  to  read  an  excuse  for  him 
in  the  signs  of  bodily  fatigue.  ''  You  know  I  am  making  the 
catalogue  on  the  new  plan  that  my  father  wished  for ;  you 
have  not  time  to  help  me,  so  I  must  work  at  it  closely." 

Tito,  instead  of  meeting  Romola's  glance,  closed  his  eyes 
and  rubbed  his  hands  over  his  face  and  hair.  He  felt  he  was 
behaving  unlike  himself,  but  he  would  make  amends  to-mor- 
row. The  terrible  resurrection  of  secret  fears,  which,  if 
Romola  had  known  them,  would  have  alienated  her  from  him 
forever,  caused  him  to  feel  an  alienation  already  begun  be- 
tween them  —  caused  him  to  feel  a  certain  repulsion  towards 
a  woman  from  whose  mind  he  was  in  danger.  The  feeling 
had  taken  hold  of  him  unawares,  and  he  was  vexed  with  him- 
self for  behaving  in  this  new  cold  way  to  her.  He  could  not 
suddenly  command  any  affectionate  looks  or  words ;  he  could 
only  exert  himself  to  say  what  might  serve  as  an  excuse. 

"I  am  not  well,  Romola;  you  must  not  be  surprised  if  I 
am  peevish." 

"Ah,  you  have  had  so  much  to  tire  you  to-day,"  said 
Romola,  kneeling  down  close  to  him,  and  laying  her  arm  on 
his  chest  while  she  put  his  hair  back  caressingly. 

Suddenly  she  drew  her  arm  away  with  a  start,  and  a  gaze  of 
alarmed  inquiry. 

"  What  have  you  got  under  your  tunic,  Tito  ?  Something 
as  hard  as  iron." 

"  It  is  iron  —  it  is  chain-armor,"  he  said  at  once.  He 
was  prepared  for  the  surprise  and  the  question,  and  he 
spoke  quietly,  as  of  something  that  he  was  not  hurried  to 
explain. 

"  There  was  some  unexpected  danger  to-day,  then  ?  "  said 
Romola,  in  a  tone  of  conjecture.  "  You  had  it  lent  to  you  for 
the  procession  ?  " 

"  No ;  it  is  my  own.  I  shall  be  obliged  to  wear  it  con- 
stantly, for  some  time." 

"  What  is  it  that  threatens  you,  my  Tito  ?  "  said  Romola, 
looking  terrified,  and  clinging  to  him  again. 

"  Every  one  is  threatened  in  these  times,  who  is  not  a  rabid 
enemy  of  the  Medici.  Don't  look  distressed,  my  Romola  — 
this  armor  will  make  me  safe  against  covert  attacks." 

Tito  put  his  hand  on  her  neck  and  smiled.     This  little  dia- 


THE   YOUNG   WIFE.  229 

logue  about  the  armor  had  broken  through  the  new  crust,  and 
made  a  channel  for  the  sweet  habit  of  kindness. 

"  But  my  godfather,  then,"  said  Romola ;  "  is  not  he,  too,  in 
danger  ?  And  he  takes  no  precautions  —  ought  he  not  ?  since 
he  miist  surely  be  in  more  danger  than  you,  who  have  so  little 
influence  compared  with  him." 

"  It  is  just  because  I  am  less  important  that  I  am  in  more 
danger,"  said  Tito,  readily.  "  I  am  suspected  constantly  of 
being  an  envoy.  And  men  like  Messer  Bernardo  are  protected 
by  their  position  and  their  extensive  family  connections,  which 
spread  among  all  parties,  while  I  am  a  Greek  that  nobody 
would  avenge." 

'*  But,  Tito,  is  it  a  fear  of  some  particular  person,  or  only  a 
vague  sense  of  danger,  that  has  made  you  think  of  wearing 
this  ?  "  Romola  was  unable  to  repel  the  idea  of  a  degrading 
fear  in  Tito,  which  mingled  itself  with  her  anxiety. 

"  I  have  had  special  threats,"  said  Tito,  "  but  I  must  beg 
you  to  be  silent  on  the  subject,  my  Romola.  I  shall  consider 
that  you  have  broken  my  confidence,  if  you  mention  it  to 
your  godfather." 

"  Assuredly  I  will  not  mention  it,"  said  Romola,  blushing, 
"  if  you  wish  it  to  be  a  secret.  But,  dearest  Tito,"  she  added, 
after  a  moment's  pause,  in  a  tone  of  loving  anxiety,  "  it  will 
make  you  very  wretched." 

"  What  will  make  me  wretched  ?  "  he  said,  with  a  scarcely 
perceptible  movement  across  his  face,  as  from  some  darting 
sensation. 

"  This  fear  —  this  heavy  armor.  I  can't  help  shuddering  as 
I  feel  it  under  my  arm.  I  could  fancy  it  a  story  of  enchant- 
ment—  that  some  malignant  fiend  had  changed  your  sensitive 
human  skin  into  a  hard  shell.  It  seems  so  unlike  my  bright, 
light-hearted  Tito  ! " 

"  Then  you  would  rather  have  your  husband  exposed  to 
danger,  when  he  leaves  you  ?  "  said  Tito,  smiling.  "  If  you 
don't  mind  my  being  poniarded  or  shot,  why  need  I  mind  ?  I 
will  give  up  the  armor  —  shall  I  ?  " 

"  No,  Tito,  no.  I  am  fanciful.  Do  not  heed  what  I  have 
said.  But  such  crimes  are  surely  not  common  in  Florence  ? 
I  have  always  heard  my  father  and  godfather  say  so.  Have 
they  become  frequent  lately  ?  " 

"  It  is  not  unlikely  they  will  become  frequent,  with  the 
bitter  hatreds  that  are  being  bred  continually." 

Romola  was  silent  a  few  moments.  She  shrank  from  in- 
sisting further  on  the  subject  of  the  armor.  She  tried  to 
shake  it  off. 


230  ROMOLA. 

"  Tell  me  what  has  happened  to-day,"  she  said,  in  a  cheerful 
tone.     "  Has  all  gone  off  well  ?  " 

"  Excellently  well.  First  of  all,  the  rain  came  and  put  an 
end  to  Luca  Corsini's  oration,  which  nobody  wanted  to  hear, 
and  a  ready-tongued  personage  —  some  say  it  was  Gaddi, 
some  say  it  was  Melema,  but  really  it  was  done  so  quickly  no 
one  knows  who  it  was  —  had  the  honor  of  giving  the  Cris- 
tianissimo  the  briefest  possible  welcome  in  bad  French." 

"  Tito,  it  was  you,  I  know,"  said  Romola,  smiling  brightly, 
and  kissing  him.  ''  How  is  it  you  never  care  about  claiming 
anything  ?     And  after  that  ?  " 

"  Oh !  after  that,  there  was  a  shower  of  armor  and  jewels 
and  trappings,  such  as  you  saw  at  the  last  Florentine  giostra, 
only  a  great  deal  more  of  them.  There  was  strutting,  and 
prancing,  and  confusion,  and  scrambling,  and  the  people 
shouted,  and  the  Cristianissimo  smiled  from  ear  to  ear.  And 
after  that  there  was  a  great  deal  of  flattery,  and  eating,  and 
play.  I  was  at  Tornabuoni's.  I  will  tell  you  about  it  to- 
morrow." 

"  Yes,  dearest,  never  mind  now.  But  is  there  any  more 
hope  that  things  will  end  peaceably  for  Florence,  that  the 
Republic  will  not  get  into  fresh  troubles  ?  " 

Tito  gave  a  shrug,  ''  Florence  will  have  no  peace  but  what 
it  pays  well  for ;  that  is  clear." 

Romola's  face  saddened,  but  she  checked  herself,  and  said^ 
cheerfully,  "  You  would  not  guess  where  I  went  to-day,  Tito 
I  went  to  the  Duorao,  to  hear  Fra  Girolamo." 

Tito  looked  startled ;  he  had  immediately  thought  of  Bal- 
dassarre's  entrance  into  the  Duomo  ;  but  Romola  gave  his  look 
another  meaning. 

"  You  are  surprised,  are  you  not  ?  It  was  a  sudden  thought. 
I  want  to  know  all  about  the  public  affairs  now,  and  I  deter- 
mined to  hear  for  myself  what  the  Frate  promised  the  people 
about  this  French  invasion." 

"  Well,  and  what  did  you  think  of  the  prophet  ?  " 

"  He  certainly  has  a  very  mysterious  power,  that  man.  A 
great  deal  of  his  sermon  was  what  I  expected;  but  once  I  was 
strangely  moved  —  I  sobbed  with  the  rest." 

"Take  care,  Romola,"  said  Tito,  playfully,  feeling  relieved 
that  she  had  said  nothing  about  Baldassarre ;  "you  have  a 
touch  of  fanaticism  in  you.  I  shall  have  you  seeing  visions, 
like  your  brother." 

"  No ;  it  was  the  same  with  every  one  else.  He  carried 
them   all  with  him  ;    unless  it  were  that  gross  Dolfo  Spini, 


THE  PAINTED  RECORD.  231 

whom  I  saw  there  making  grimaces.  There  was  even  a 
wretched-looking  man,  with  a  rope  round  his  neck  —  an 
escaped  prisoner,  I  should  think,  who  had  run  in  for  shelter 
—  a  very  wild-eyed  old  man :  I  saw  him  with  great  tears 
rolling  down  his  cheeks,  as  he  looked  and  listened  quite 
eagerly." 

There  was  a  slight  pause  before  Tito  spoke. 

"  I  saw  the  man,"  he  said,  —  "  the  prisoner.  I  was  outside 
the  Duomo  with  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni  when  he  ran  in.  He 
had  escaped  from  a  French  soldier.  Did  you  see  him  when 
you  came  out  ?  " 

"  No,  he  wont  out  with  our  good  old  Piero  di  Cosimo.  I 
saw  Piero  come  in  and  cut  off  his  rope,  and  take  him  out  of 
the  church.     But  you  want  rest,  Tito  ?     You  feel  ill  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Tito,  rising.  The  horrible  sense  that  he  must 
live  in  continual  dread  of  what  Baldassarre  had  said  or  done 
pressed  upon  him  like  a  cold  weight. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 

THE    PAINTED    RECORD. 

Four  days  later,  Romola  was  on  her  way  to  the  house  of 
Piero  di  Cosimo,  in  the  Via  Gualfonda.  Some  of  the  streets 
through  which  she  had  to  pass  were  lined  with  Frenchmen  who 
were  gazing  at  Florence,  and  with  Florentines  who  were 
gazing  at  the  French,  and  the  gaze  was  not  on  either  side 
entirely  friendly  and  admiring.  The  first  nation  in  Europe, 
of  necessity  finding  itself,  when  out  of  its  own  country,  in 
the  presence  of  general  inferiority,  naturally  assumed  an  air 
of  conscious  pre-eminence;  and  the  Florentines,  who  had 
taken  such  pains  to  play  the  host  amiably,  were  getting  into 
the  worst  humor  with  their  too  superior  guests. 

For  after  the  first  smiling  compliments  and  festivities  were 
over  —  after  wondrous  Mysteries  with  unrivalled  machinery 
of  floating  clouds  and  angels  had  been  presented  in  churches 
—  after  the  royal  guest  had  honored  Florentine  dames  with 
much  of  his  Most  Christian  ogling  at  balls  and  suppers,  and 
business  had  begun  to  be  talked  of  —  it  appeared  that  the 
new  Charlemagne  regarded  Florence  as  a  conquered  city,  in- 
asmuch as  he  had  entered  it  with  his  lance  in  rest,  talked  of 


232  ROM  OLA. 

leaving  his  viceroy  behind  him,  and  had  thoughts  of  bringing 
back  the  Medici.  Singular  logic  this  appeared  to  be  on  the 
part  of  an  elect  instrument  of  God  !  since  the  policy  of  Piero 
^e'  Medici,  disowned  by  the  people,  had  been  the  only  offence 
of  Florence  against  the  majesty  of  France.  And  Florence 
was  determined  not  to  submit.  The  determination  was  being 
expressed  very  strongly  in  consultations  of  citizens  inside  the 
Old  Palace,  and  it  was  beginning  to  show  itself  on  the  broad 
flags  of  the  streets  and  piazza  wherever  there  was  an  opportu- 
nity of  flouting  an  insolent  Frenchman.  Under  these  circum- 
stances the  streets  were  not  altogether  a  pleasant  promenade 
for  well-born  women ;  but  Romola,  shrouded  in  her  black  veil 
and  mantle,  and  with  old  Maso  by  her  side,  felt  secure  enough 
from  impertinent  observation. 

And  she  was  impatient  to  visit  Piero  di  Cosimo.  A  copy 
of  her  father's  portrait  as  QSdipus,  which  he  had  long  ago 
undertaken  to  make  for  her,  was  not  yet  finished ;  and  Piero 
was  so  uncertain  in  his  work  —  sometimes,  when  the  demand 
was  not  peremptory,  laying  aside  a  picture  for  months ;  some- 
times thrusting  it  into  a  corner  or  coffer,  where  it  was  likely 
to  be  utterly  forgotten  —  that  she  felt  it  necessary  to  watch 
over  his  progress.  She  was  a  favorite  with  the  painter,  and 
he  was  inclined  to  fulfil  any  wish  of  hers,  but  no  general 
inclination  could  be  trusted  as  a  safeguard  against  his  sudden 
whims.  He  had  told  her  the  week  before  that  the  picture 
would  perhaps  be  finished  by  this  time;  and  Romola  was 
nervously  anxious  to  have  in  her  possession  a  copy  of  the 
only  portrait  existing  of  her  father  in  the  days  of  his  blind- 
ness, lest  his  image  should  grow  dim  in  her  mind.  The  sense 
of  defect  in  her  devotedness  to  him  made  her  cling  with  all 
the  force  of  compunction  as  well  as  affection  to  the  duties  of 
memory.  Love  does  not  aim  simply  at  the  conscious  good  of 
the  beloved  object :  it  is  not  satisfied  without  perfect  loyalty 
of  heart ;  it  aims  at  its  own  completeness. 

Romola,  by  special  favor,  was  allowed  to  intrude  upon  the 
painter  without  previous  notice.  She  lifted  the  iron  slide 
and  called  Piero  in  a  flute-like  tone,  as  the  little  maiden  with 
the  eggs  had  done  in  Tito's  presence.  Piero  was  quick  in 
answering,  but  when  he  opened  the  door  he  accounted  for  his 
quickness  in  a  manner  that  was  not  complimentary. 

"  Ah,  Madonna  Romola,  is  it  you  ?  I  thought  my  eggs 
were  come;  I  wanted  them." 

"  I  have  brought  you  something  better  than  hard  eggs, 
Piero.     Maso  has  got  a  little  basket  full  of  cakes  and  confetti 


THE  PAINTED  RECORD.  233 

for  you,"  said  Romola,  smiling,  as  she  put  back  her  veil.  She 
took  the  basket  from  Maso,  and  stepping  into  the  house, 
said,  — 

"  I  know  you  like  these  things  when  you  can  have  them 
without  trouble.     Confess  you  do." 

"  Yes,  when  they  come  to  me  as  easily  as  the  light  does," 
said  Piero,  folding  his  arms  and  looking  down  at  the  sweet- 
meats as  Romola  uncovered  them  and  glanced  at  him  archly. 
"  And  they  are  come  along  with  the  light  now,"  he  added, 
lifting  his  eyes  to  her  face  and  hair  with  a  painter's  admira- 
tion, as  her  hood,  dragged  by  the  weight  of  her  veil,  fell 
backward. 

"  But  I  know  what  the  sweetmeats  are  for,"  he  went  on ; 
"they  are  to  stop  my  mouth  while  you  scold  me.  Well,  go 
on  into  the  next  room,  and  you  will  see  I've  done  something 
to  the  picture  since  you  saw  it,  though  it's  not  finished  yet. 
But  I  didn't  promise,  you  know  :  I  take  care  not  to  promise :  — 

"  '  Chi  promette  e  non  inantiene 
L'anima  sua  non  va  mai  bene.'  " 

The  door  opening  on  the  wild  garden  was  closed  now,  and 
the  painter  was  at  work.  Not  at  Romola's  picture,  however. 
That  was  standing  on  the  floor,  propped  against  the  wall,  and 
Piero  stooped  to  lift  it,  that  he  might  carry  it  into  the  proper 
light.  But  in  lifting  away  this  picture,  he  had  disclosed 
another  —  the  oil-sketch  of  Tito  to  which  he  had  made  an 
important  addition  within  the  last  few  days.  It  was  so  much 
smaller  than  the  other  picture,  that  it  stood  far  within  it,  and 
Piero,  apt  to  forget  where  he  had  placed  anything,  was  not 
aware  of  what  he  had  revealed  as,  peering  at  some  detail  in 
the  painting  which  he  held  in  his  hands,  he  went  to  place  it 
on  an  easel.  But  Romola  exclaimed,  flushing  with  astonish- 
ment, — 

"  That  is  Tito  ! " 

Piero  looked  round,  and  gave  a  silent  shrug.  He  was 
vexed  at  his  own  forgetfulness. 

She  was  still  looking  at  the  sketch  in  astonishment ;  but 
presently  she  turned  towards  the  painter,  and  said  with 
puzzled  alarm,  — 

"  What  a  strange  picture  !  When  did  you  paint  it  ?  What 
does  it  mean  ?  " 

"  A  mere  fancy  of  mine,"  said  Piero,  lifting  off  his  skull- 
cap, scratching  his  head,  and  making  the  usual  grimace  by 
which  he  avoided  the  betrayal  of  any  feeling.     "  I  wanted  a 


234  ROM  OLA. 

handsome  young  face  for  it,  and  your  husband's  was  just  the 
thing." 

He  went  forward,  stooped  down  to  the  picture,  and  lifting 
it  away  with  its  back  to  Romola,  pretended  to  be  giving  it  a 
passing  examination,  before  putting  it  aside  as  a  thing  not 
good  enough  to  show. 

But  Romola,  who  had  the  fact  of  the  armor  in  her  mind, 
and  was  penetrated  by  this  strange  coincidence  of  things 
which  associated  Tito  with  the  idea  of  fear,  went  to  his  elbow 
and  said,  — 

"  Don't  put  it  away  ;  let  me  look  again.  That  man  with 
the  rope  round  his  neck — I  saw  him  —  I  saw  you  come  to 
him  in  the  Duomo.  What  was  it  that  made  you  put  him  into 
a  picture  with  Tito  ?  " 

Piero  saw  no  better  resource  than  to  tell  part  of  the  truth. 

"  It  was  a  mere  accident.  The  man  was  running  away  — 
running  up  the  steps,  and  caught  hold  of  your  husband :  I 
suppose  he  had  stumbled.  I  happened  to  be  there,  and  saw 
it,  and  I  thought  the  savage-looking  old  fellow  was  a  good 
subject.  But  it's  worth  nothing  —  it's  only  a  freakish  daub 
of  mine."  Piero  ended  contemptuously,  moving  the  sketch 
away  with  an  air  of  decision,  and  putting  it  on  a  high  shelf. 
"  Come  and  look  at  the  CEdipus." 

He  had  shown  a  little  too  much  anxiety  in  putting  the 
sketch  out  of  her  sight,  and  had  produced  the  very  impression 
he  had  sought  to  prevent  —  that  there  was  really  something 
unpleasant,  something  disadvantageous  to  Tito,  in  the  circum- 
stances out  of  which  the  picture  arose.  But  this  impression 
silenced  her :  her  pride  and  delicacy  shrank  from  questioning 
further,  where  questions  might  seem  to'imply  that  she  could 
entertain  even  a  slight  suspicion  against  her  husband.  She 
merely  said,  in  as  quiet  a  tone  as  she  could,  — 

"  He  was  a  strange  piteous-looking  man,  that  prisoner.  Do 
you  know  anything  more  of  him  ?  " 

"  No  more :  T  showed  him  the  way  to  the  hospital,  that's 
all.  See,  now,  the  face  of  CEdipus  is  pretty  nearly  finished ; 
tell  me  what  you  think  of  it." 

Romola  now  gave  her  whole  attention  to  her  father's 
portrait,  standing  in  long  silence  before  it. 

''Ah,"  she  said  at  last,  "you  have  done  what  I  wanted. 
You  have  given  it  more  of  the  listening  look.  My  good 
Piero"  —  she  turned  towards  him  with  bright  moist  eyes  — 
"  I  am  very  grateful  to  you." 

"Now  that's  what  I  can't  bear  in  you  women,"  said  Piero, 


THE  PAINTED  RECORD.  235 

turning  impatiently,  and  kicking  aside  the  objects  that 
littered  the  floor  —  "you  are  always  pouring  out  feelings  where 
there's  no  call  for  them.  Why  should  you  be  grateful  to  me 
for  a  picture  you  pay  me  for,  especially  when  I  make  you 
wait  for  it  ?  And  if  I  paint  a  picture,  I  suppose  it's  for  my 
own  pleasure  and  credit  to  paint  it  well,  eh  ?  Are  you  to 
thank  a  man  for  not  being  a  rogue  or  a  noodle  ?  It's  enough 
if  he  himself  thanks  Messer  Domeneddio,  who  has  made  him 
neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  But  women  think  walls  are 
held  together  with  honey." 

"  You  crusty  Piero !  I  forgot  how  snappish  you  are.  Here, 
put  this  nice  sweetmeat  in  your  mouth,"  said  Romola,  smiling 
through  her  tears,  and  taking  something  very  crisp  and  sweet 
from  the  little  basket. 

Piero  accepted  it  very  much  as  that  proverbial  bear  that 
dreams  of  pears  might  accept  an  exceedingly  mellow  "  swan- 
egg  "  —  really  liking  the  gift,  but  accustomed  to  have  his 
pleasures  and  pains  concealed  under  a  shaggy  coat. 

"It's  good.  Madonna  Antigone,"  said  Piero,  putting  his 
fingers  in  the  basket  for  another.  He  had  eaten  nothing  but 
hard  eggs  for  a  fortnight.  E-omola  stood  opposite  him,  feeling 
her  new  anxiety  suspended  for  a  little  while  by  the  sight  of 
this  naive  enjoyment. 

"Good-by,  Piero,"  she  said,  presently,  setting  down  the 
basket.  "I  promise  not  to  thank  you  if  you  finish  the 
portrait  soon  and  well.  I  will  tell  you,  you  were  bound  to 
do  it  for  your  own  credit." 

"  Good,"  said  Piero,  curtly,  helping  her  with  much  deftness 
to  fold  her  mantle  and  veil  round  her. 

"  I'm  glad  she  asked  no  more  questions  about  that  sketch," 
he  thought,  when  he  had  closed  the  door  behind  her.  "  I 
should  be  sorry  for  her  to  guess  that  I  thought  her  fine 
husband  a  good  model  for  a  coward.  But  I  made  light  of  it ; 
she'll  not  think  of  it  again." 

Piero  was  too  sanguine,  as  open-hearted  men  are  apt  to  be 
when  they  attempt  a  little  clever  simulation.  The  thought 
of  the  picture  pressed  more  and  more  on  Romola  as  she 
walked  homeward.  She  could  not  help  putting  together  the 
two  facts  of  the  chain  armor  and  the  encounter  mentioned  by 
Piero  between  her  husband  and  the  prisoner,  which  had 
happened  on  the  morning  of  the  day  when  the  armor  was 
adopted.  That  look  of  terror  which  the  painter  had  given 
Tito,  had  he  seen  it  ?     What  could  it  all  mean  ? 

"  It  means  nothing,"  she  tried  to  assure  herself.     "  It  was  a 


236  ROMOLA. 

mere  coincidenee.  Shall  I  ask  Tito  about  it  ?  "  Her  mind 
said  at  last,  "  No :  I  will  not  question  him  aV)out  anything  he 
did  not  tell  me  spontaneously.  It  is  an  offence  against  the 
trust  I  owe  him."     Her  heart  said,  "  I  dare  not  ask  him," 

There  was  a  terrible  flaw  in  the  trust:  she  was  afraid  of 
any  hasty  movement,  as  men  are  who  hold  something  precious 
and  want  to  believe  that  it  is  not  broken. 


CHAPTER   XXIX. 

A    MOMENT    OF    TRIUMPH. 

"  The  old  fellow  has  vanished ;  went  on  towards  Arezzo  the 
next  morning  ;  not  liking  the  smell  of  the  French,  I  sup- 
pose, after  being  their  prisoner.  I  went  to  the  hospital  to 
inquire  after  him ;  I  wanted  to  know  if  those  broth-making 
monks  had  found  out  whether  he  was  in  his  right  mind  or 
not.  However,  they  said  he  showed  no  signs  of  madness  — 
only  took  no  notice  of  questions,  and  seemed  to  be  planting  a 
vine  twenty  miles  off.  He  was  a  mysterious  old  tiger.  I 
should  have  liked  to  know  something  more  about  him." 

It  was  in  Nello's  shop  that  Piero  di  Cosimo  was  speaking, 
on  the  twenty-fourth  of  November,  just  a  week  after  the 
entrance  of  the  French.  There  was  a  party  of  six  or  seven 
assembled  at  the  rather  unusual  hour  of  three  in  the  after- 
noon ;  for  it  was  a  day  on  which  all  Florence  was  excited  by 
the  prospect  of  some  decisive  political  event.  Every  lounging- 
place  was  full,  and  every  shopkeeper  who  had  no  wife  or 
deputy  to  leave  in  charge,  stood  at  his  door  with  his  thumbs 
in  his  belt ;  while  the  streets  were  constantly  sprinkled  with 
artisans  pausing  or  passing  lazily  like  floating  splinters,  ready 
to  rush  forward  impetuously  if  any  object  attracted  them. 

Nello  had  been  thrumming  the  lute  as  he  half  sat  on  the 
board  against  the  shop-window,  and  kept  an  outlook  towards 
the  piazza. 

'*  Ah,"  he  said,  laying  down  the  lute,  with  emphasis,  "I 
would  not  for  a  gold  florin  have  missed  that  sight  of  the 
French  soldiers  waddling  in  their  broad  shoes  after  their 
runaway  prisoners !  That  comes  of  leaving  my  shop  to  shave 
magnificent  chins.  It  is  always  so :  if  ever  I  quit  this  navel 
of  the  earth  something  takes  the  opportunity  of  happening 
in  my  piazza." 


A  MOMENT  OF  TRIUMPH,  237 

"Yes,  you  ought  to  have  been  there,"  said  Piero,  in  his 
biting  way,  "just  to  see  your  favorite  Greek  look  as  frightened 
as  if  Satanasso  had  laid  hold  of  him.  I  like  to  see  your 
ready-smiling  Messeri  caught  in  a  sudden  wind  and  obliged  to 
show  their  lining  in  spite  of  themselves.  What  color  do  you 
think  a  man's  liver  is,  who  looks  like  a  bleached  deer  as  soon 
as  a  chance  stranger  lays  hold  of  him  suddenly  ?  " 

"  Piero,  keep  that  vinegar  of  thine  as  sauce  to  thine  own 
eggs  !  What  is  it  against  my  bel  erudito  that  he  looked 
startled  when  he  felt  a  pair  of  claws  upon  him  and  saw  an 
unchained  madman  at  his  elbow  ?  Your  scholar  is  not  like 
those  beastly  Swiss  and  Germans,  whose  heads  are  only  fit  for 
battering-rams,  and  who  have  such  large  appetites  that  they 
think  nothing  of  taking  a  cannon-ball  before  breakfast.  We 
Florentines  count  some  other  qualities  in  a  man  besides  that 
vulgar  stuff  called  bravery,  which  is  to  be  got  by  hiring 
dunderheads  at  so  much  per  dozen.  T  tell  you,  as  soon  as 
men  found  out  that  they  had  more  brains  than  oxen,  they  set 
the  oxen  to  draw  for  them ;  and  when  we  Florentines  found 
out  that  we  had  more  brains  than  other  men,  we  set  them  to 
fight  for  us." 

''  Treason,  Nello !  "  a  voice  called  out  from  the  inner  sanc- 
tum ;  "that  is  not  the  doctrine  of  the  State.  Florence  is 
grinding  its  weapons  ;  and  the  last  well-authenticated  vision  an- 
nounced by  the  Frate  was  Mars  standing  on  the  Palazzo  Vec- 
chio  with  his  arm  on  the  shoulder  of  San  Giovanni  Battista, 
who  was  offering  him  a  piece  of  honeycomb." 

"  It  is  well,  Francesco,"  said  Nello.  "  Florence  has  a  few 
thicker  skulls  that  may  do  to  bombard  Pisa  with ;  there  will 
still  be  the  finer  spirits  left  at  home  to  do  the  thinking  and 
the  shaving.  And  as  for  our  Piero  here,  if  he  makes  such  a 
point  of  valor,  let  him  carry  his  biggest  brush  for  a  weapon 
and  his  palette  for  a  shield,  and  challenge  the  widest  mouthed 
Swiss  he  can  see  in  the  Prato  to  a  single  combat." 

"  Va,  Nello,"  growled  Piero,  "  thy  tongue  runs  on  as  usual, 
like  a  mill  when  the  Arno's  full  —  whether  there's  grist  or 
not." 

"  Excellent  grist,  I  tell  thee.  For  it  would  be  as  reasonable 
to  expect  a  grizzled  painter  like  thee  to  be  fond  of  getting  a 
javelin  inside  thee  as  to  expect  a  man  whose  wits  have  been 
sharpened  on  the  classics  to  like  having  his  handsome  face 
clawed  by  a  wild  beast." 

"  There  you  go,  supposing  you'll  get  people  to  put  their  legs 
into  a  sack  because  you  call  it  a  pair  of  hoseu,"  said  Pieru. 


238  ROMOLA. 

"  Who  said  anything  about  a  wild  beast,  or  about  an  unarmed 
man  rushing  on  battle  ?  Fighting  is  a  trade,  and  it's  not  my 
trade.  I  should  be  a  fool  to  run  after  danger,  but  I  could  face 
it  if  it  came  to  me." 

"  How  is  it  you're  so  afraid  of  the  thunder,  then,  my 
Piero  ? "  said  Nello,  determined  to  chase  down  the  accuser. 
"  You  ought  to  be  able  to  understand  why  one  man  is  shaken 
by  a  thing  that  seems  a  trifle  to  others  —  you  who  hide  your- 
self with  the  rats  as  soon  as  a  storm  comes  on." 

"That  is  because  I  have  a  particular  sensibility  to  loud 
sounds ;  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  my  courage  or  my  con- 
science." 

"  Well,  and  Tito  Melema  may  have  a  peculiar  sensibility  to 
being  laid  hold  of  unexpectedly  by  prisoners  who  have  run 
away  from  French  soldiers.  Men  are  born  with  antipathies ; 
I  myself  can't  abide  the  smell  of  mint.  Tito  was  born  with 
an  antipathy  to  old  prisoners  who  stumble  and  clutch. 
Ecco  ! " 

There  was  a  general  laugh  at  Nello's  defence,  and  it  was 
clear  that  Piero's  disinclination  towards  Tito  was  not  shared 
by  the  company.  The  painter,  with  his  undecipherable  gri- 
mace, took  the  tow  from  his  scarsella  and  stuffed  his  ears  in 
indignant  contempt,  while  Nello  went  on  triumphantly,  — 

"  No,  my  Piero,  I  can't  afford  to  have  my  bel  erudito  de- 
cried ;  and  Florence  can't  afford  it  either,  with  her  scholars 
moulting  off  her  at  the  early  age  of  forty.  Our  Phoenix  Pico 
just  gone  straight  to  Paradise,  as  the  Frate  has  informed  us ; 
and  the  incomparable  Poliziano,  not  two  months  since,  gone  to 
—  well,  well,  let  us  hope  he  is  not  gone  to  the  eminent  scholars 
in  the  Malebolge. 

"  By  the  way,"  said  Francesco  Cei,  "  have  you  heard  that 
Camilla  Rucellai  has  outdone  the  Frate  in  her  prophecies  ? 
She  prophesied  two  years  ago  that  Pico  would  die  in  the  time 
of  lilies.  He  has  died  in  November.  '  Not  at  all  the  time  of 
lilies,'  said  the  scorners.  ' Go  to ! '  says  Camilla ;  'it  is  the 
lilies  of  France  I  meant,  and  it  seems  to  me  they  are  close 
enough  under  your  nostrils.'  I  say,  '  Euge,  Camilla ! '  If  the 
Frate  can  prove  that  any  one  of  his  visions  has  been  as  well 
fulfilled,  I'll  declare  myself  a  Piagnone  to-morrow." 

"You  are  something  too  flippant  about  the  Frate,  Fran- 
cesco," said  Pietro  Cennini,  the  scholarly.  "We  are  all  in- 
debted to  him  in  these  weeks  for  preaching  peace  and  quietness, 
and  the  laying  aside  of  j)arty  quarrels.  They  are  men  of  small 
discernment  who  would  be  glad  to  see  the  people  slipping  the 


A  MOMENT  OF  TRIUMPH.  239 

Frate's  leash  just  now.  And  if  the  Most  Christian  King  is 
obstinate  about  the  treaty  to-day,  and  will  not  sign  what  is 
fair  and  honorable  to  Florence,  Fra  Girolamo  is  the  man  we 
must  trust  in  to  bring  him  to  reason." 

"  You  speak  truth,  Messer  Pietro,"  said  Nello ;  "  the  Frate 
is  one  of  the  firmest  nails  Florence  has  to  hang  on  —  at  least, 
that  is  the  opinion  of  the  most  respectable  chins  I  have  the 
honor  of  shaving.  But  young  Messer  Niccolo  was  saying  here 
the  other  morning  —  and  doubtless  Francesco  means  the  same 
thing  —  there  is  as  wonderful  a  power  of  stretching  in  the 
meaning  of  visions  as  in  Dido's  bull's  hide.  It  seems  to  me  a 
dream  may  mean  whatever  comes  after  it.  As  our  Franco 
Sacchetti  says,  a  woman  dreams  over-night  of  a  serpent  biting 
her,  breaks  a  drinking-cup  the  next  day,  and  cries  out,  '  Look 
you,  I  thought  something  would  happen  —  it's  plain  now  what 
the  serpent  meant.' " 

"  But  the  Frate's  visions  are  not  of  that  sort,"  said  Cronaca. 
"  He  not  only  says  what  will  happen  —  that  the  Church  will 
be  scourged  and  renovated,  and  the  heathens  converted  —  he 
says  it  shall  happen  quickly.  He  is  no  slippery  pretender 
who  provides  loopholes  for  himself,  he  is  "  — 

"  What  is  this  ?  what  is  this  ?  "  exclaimed  Nello,  jumping 
off  the  board,  and  putting  his  head  out  at  the  door.  "  Here 
are  people  streaming  into  the  piazza,  and  shouting.  Some- 
thing must  have  happened  in  the  Via  Larga.  Aha  ! "  he  bui*st 
forth  with  delighted  astonishment,  stepping  out  laughing  and 
waving  his  cap. 

All  the  rest  of  the  company  hastened  to  the  door.  News 
from  the  Via  Larga  was  just  what  they  had  been  waiting  for. 
But  if  the  news  had  come  into  the  piazza,  they  were  not  a  lit- 
tle surprised  at  the  form  of  its  advent.  Carried  above  the 
shoulders  of  the  people,  on  a  bench  apparently  snatched  up  in 
the  street,  sat  Tito  Melema,  in  smiling  amusement  at  the  com- 
pulsion he  was  under.  His  cap  had  slipped  off  his  head,  and 
hung  by  the  becchetto  which  was  wound  loosely  round  his 
neck  ;  and  as  he  saw  the  group  at  ISTello's  door  he  lifted  up  his 
fingers  in  beckoning  recognition.  The  next  minute  he  had 
leaped  from  the  bench  on  to  a  cart  filled  with  bales,  that  stood 
in  the  broad  space  between  the  Baptistery  and  the  steps  of 
the  Duomo,  while  the  people  swarmed  round  him  with  the 
noisy  eagerness  of  poultry  expecting  to  be  fed.  But  there 
was  silence  when  he  began  to  speak  in  his  clear  mellow  voice,  — 

"  Citizens  of  Florence  !  I  have  no  warrant  to  tell  the  news 
except  your  will.     But  the  news  is  good,  and  will  harm  no 


240  ROM  OLA. 

man  in  the  telling.  The  Most  Christian  King  is  signing  a 
treaty  that  is  honorable  to  Florence.  But  you  owe  it  to  one 
of  your  citizens  who  spoke  a  word  worthy  of  the  ancient 
Komans  —  you  owe  it  to  Piero  Capponi !  " 

Immediately  there  was  a  roar  of  voices. 

"  Capponi !  Capponi !  What  said  our  Piero  ?  "  "  Ah  !  he 
wouldn't  stand  being  sent  from  Herod  to  Pilate  ! "  ''  We  knew 
Piero  !  "     "  Orsu  !     Tell  us,  what  did  he  say  ?  " 

When  the  roar  of  insistence  had  subsided  a  little,  Tito 
began  again, — 

"  The  Most  Christian  King  demanded  a  little  too  much  — 
was  obstinate  —  said  at  last,  '  I  shall  order  my  trumpets  to 
sound.'  Then,  Florentine  citizens !  your  Piero  Capponi, 
speaking  with  the  voice  of  a  free  city,  said,  '  If  you  sound 
your  trumpets,  we  will  ring  our  bells ! '  He  snatched  the 
copy  of  the  dishonoring  conditions  from  the  hands  of  the 
secretai-y,  tore  it  in  pieces,  and  turned  to  leave  the  royal 
presence." 

Again  there  were  loud  shouts  —  and  again  impatient  de- 
mands for  more. 

*'  Then,  Florentines,  the  high  majesty  of  France  felt,  per- 
haps for  the  first  time,  all  the  majesty  of  a  free  city.  And 
the  Most  Christian  King  himself  hastened  from  his  place  to 
call  Piero  Capponi  back.  The  great  spirit  of  your  Florentine 
city  did  its  work  by  a  great  word,  without  need  of  the  great 
actions  that  lay  ready  behind  it.  And  the  King  has  con- 
sented to  sign  the  treaty,  which  preserves  the  honor,  as  well 
as  the  safety,  of  Florence.  The  banner  of  France  will  float 
over  every  Florentine  galley  in  sign  of  amity  and  common 
privilege,  but  above  that  banner  will  be  written  the  word, 
'Liberty!' 

"  That  is  all  the  news  I  have  to  tell ;  is  it  not  enough  ?  — 
since  it  is  for  the  glory  of  every  one  of  you,  citizens  of  Flor- 
ence, that  you  have  a  fellow-citizen  who  knows  how  to  speak 
your  will." 

As  the  shouts  rose  again,  Tito  looked  round  with  inward 
amusement  at  the  various  crowd,  each  of  whom  was  elated 
with  the  notion  that  Piero  Capponi  had  somehow  represented 
him  —  that  he  was  the  mind  of  which  Capponi  was  the 
mouthpiece.  He  enjoyed  the  humor  of  the  incident,  which 
had  suddenly  transformed  him,  an  alien,  and  a  friend  of  the 
Medici,  into  an  orator  who  tickled  the  ears  of  the  people 
blatant  for  some  unknown  good  which  they  called  liberty. 
He  felt  quite  glad  that  he  had  been  laid  hold  of  and  hurried 


A  MOMENT  OF  TRIUMPH.  241 

along  by  tlie  crowd  as  he  was  coming  out  of  the  palace  in  the 
Via  Larga  with  a  commission  to  the  Signoria.  It  was  very 
easy,  very  pleasant,  this  exercise  of  speaking  to  the  general 
satisfaction :  a  man  who  knew  how  to  persuade  need  never  be 
in  danger  from  any  party  ;  he  could  convince  each  that  he  was 
feigning  with  all  the  others.  The  gestures  and  faces  of 
weavers  and  dyers  were  certainly  amusing  when  looked  at 
from  above  in  this  way. 

Tito  was  beginning  to  get  easier  in  his  armor,  and  at  this 
moment  was  quite  unconscious  of  it.  He  stood  with  one  hand 
holding  his  recovered  cap,  and  with  the  other  at  his  belt,  the 
light  of  a  complacent  smile  in  his  long  lustrous  eyes,  as  he 
made  a  parting  reverence  to  his  audience,  before  springing  down 
from  the  bales  —  when  suddenly  his  glance  met  that  of  a  man 
who  had  not  at  all  the  amusing  aspect  of  the  exulting  weavers, 
dyers,  and  wool-carders.  The  face  of  this  man  was  clean- 
shaven, his  hair  close-clipped,  and  he  wore  a  decent  felt  hat. 
A  single  glance  would  hardly  have  sufficed  to  assure  any  one 
but  Tito  that  this  was  the  face  of  the  escaped  prisoner  who 
had  laid  hold  of  him  on  the  steps.  But  to  Tito  it  came  not 
simply  as  the  face  of  the  escaped  prisoner,  but  as  a  face  with 
which  he  had  been  familiar  long  years  before. 

It  seemed  all  compressed  into  a  second  —  the  sight  of  Bal- 
dassarre  looking  at  him,  the  sensation  shooting  through  him 
like  a  fiery  arrow,  and  the  act  of  leaping  from  the  cart.  He 
would  have  leaped  down  in  the  same  instant,  whether  he  had 
seen  Baldassarre  or  not,  for  he  was  in  a  hurry  to  be  gone  to 
the  Palazzo  Vecchio :  this  time  he  had  not  betrayed  himself 
by  look  or  movement,  and  he  said  inwardly  that  he  should  not 
be  taken  by  surprise  again ;  he  should  be  prepared  to  see  this 
face  rise  up  continually  like  the  intermittent  blotch  that  comes 
in  diseased  vision.  But  this  re-appearance  of  Baldassarre  so 
much  more  in  his  own  likeness  tightened  the  pressure  of 
dread :  the  idea  of  his  madness  lost  its  likelihood  now  he  was 
shaven  and  clad  like  a  decent  though  poor  citizen.  Certainly, 
there  was  a  great  change  in  his  face  ;  but  how  could  it  be 
otherwise  ?  And  yet,  if  he  were  perfectly  sane  —  in  posses- 
sion of  all  his  powers  and  all  his  learning,  why  was  he  linger- 
ing in  this  way  before  making  known  his  identity  ?  It  must 
be  for  the  sake  of  making  his  scheme  of  vengeance  more  com- 
plete. But  he  did  linger :  that  at  least  gave  an  opportunity 
for  flight.  And  Tito  began  to  think  that  flight  was  his  only 
resource. 

But  while  he,  with  his  back  turned  on  the  Piazza  del  Duomo, 


242  ROM  OLA. 

had  lost  the  recollection  of  the  new  part  he  had  been  playing, 
and  was  uo  longer  thinking  of  the  many  things  which  a  ready 
brain  and  tongue  made  easy,  but  of  a  few  things  which  destiny 
had  somehow  made  very  difficult,  the  enthusiasm  which  he 
had  fed  contemptuously  was  creating  a  scene  in  that  piazza 
in  grand  contrast  with  the  inward  drama  of  self-centred  fear 
which  he  had  carried  away  from  it. 

The  crowd,  on  Tito's  disappearance,  had  begun  to  turn  their 
faces  towards  the  outlets  of  the  piazza  in  the  direction  of  the 
Via  Larga,  when  the  sight  of  mazzieri,  or  mace-bearers,  enter- 
ing from  the  Via  de'  Martelli,  announced  the  approach  of  dig- 
nitaries. They  must  be  the  syndics,  or  commissioners  charged 
with  the  eifecting  of  the  treaty  ;  the  treaty  must  be  already 
signed  and  they  had  come  away  from  the  royal  presence. 
Piero  Capponi  was  coming  —  the  brave  heart  that  had  known 
how  to  speak  for  Florence.  The  effect  on  the  crowd  was  re- 
markable ;  they  parted  with  softening,  dropping  voices,  sub- 
siding into  silence,  —  and  the  silence  became  so  perfect  that 
the  tread  of  the  syndics  on  the  broad  pavement,  and  the  rustle 
of  their  black  silk  garments,  could  be  heard,  like  rain  in  the 
night.  There  were  four  of  them ;  but  it  was  not  the  two 
learned  doctors  of  law,  Messer  Guidantonio  Vespucci  and 
Messer  Domenico  Bonsi,  that  the  crowd  waited  for ;  it  was 
not  Francesco  Valori,  popular  as  he  had  become  in  these  late 
days.  The  moment  belonged  to  another  man,  of  firm  presence, 
as  little  inclined  to  humor  the  people  as  to  humor  any  other 
unreasonable  claimants  —  loving  order,  like  one  who  by  force 
of  fortune  had  been  made  a  merchant,  and  by  force  of  nature 
had  become  a  soldier.  It  was  not  till  he  was  seen  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  piazza  that  the  silence  was  broken,  and  then  one 
loud  shout  of  "  Capponi,  Capponi !  Well  done,  Capponi !  "  rang 
through  the  piazza. 

The  simple,  resolute  man  looked  round  him  with  grave  joy. 
His  fellow-citizens  gave  him  a  great  funeral  two  years  later, 
when  he  had  died  in  fight ;  there  were  torches  carried  by  all 
the  magistracy,  and  torches  again,  and  trains  of  banners.  But 
it  is  not  known  that  he  felt  any  joy  in  the  oration  that  was 
delivered  in  his  praise,  as  the  banners  waved  over  his  bier. 
Let  us  be  glad  that  he  got  some  thanks  and  praise  while  he 
lived. 


THE  AVENGER'S  SECRET,  243 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

THE  avenger's  SECRET. 

It  was  the  first  time  that  Baldassarre  had  been  in  the  Piazza 
del  Duomo  since  his  escape.  He  had  a  strong  desire  to  hear 
the  remarkable  monk  preach  again,  but  he  had  shrunk  from 
re-appearing  in  the  same  spot  where  he  had  been  seen  half 
naked,  with  neglected  hair,  with  a  rope  round  his  neck  —  in 
the  same  spot  where  he  had  been  called  a  madman.  The  feel- 
ing, in  its  freshness,  was  too  strong  to  be  overcome  by  any- 
trust  he  had  in  the  change  he  had  made  in  his  appearance ;  for 
when  the  words  '■^  some  madman,  surely,^^  had  fallen  from  Tito's 
lips,  it  was  not  their  baseness  and  cruelty  only  that  had  made 
their  viper  sting  —  it  was  Baldassarre's  instantaneous  bitter 
consciousness  that  he  might  be  unable  to  prove  the  words 
false.  Along  with  the  passionate  desire  for  vengeance  which 
possessed  him  had  arisen  the  keen  sense  that  his  power  of 
achieving  the  vengeance  was  doubtful.  It  was  as  if  Tito  had 
been  helped  by  some  diabolical  prompter,  who  had  whispered 
Baldassarre's  saddest  secret  in  the  traitor's  ear.  He  was  not 
mad ;  for  he  carried  within  him  that  piteous  stamp  of  sanity, 
the  clear  consciousness  of  shattered  faculties  ;  he  measured 
his  own  feebleness.  With  the  first  movement  of  vindictive 
rage  awoke  a  vague  caution,  like  that  of  a  wild  beast  that  is 
fierce  but  feeble  —  or  like  that  of  an  insect  whose  little  frag- 
ment of  earth  has  given  way,  and  made  it  pause  in  a  palsy  of 
distrust.  It  was  this  distrust,  this  determination  to  take  no 
step  which  might  betray  anything  concerning  himself,  that  had 
made  Baldassarre  reject  Piero  di  Cosimo's  friendly  advances. 

He  had  been  equally  cautious  at  the  hospital,  only  telling, 
in  answer  to  the  questions  of  the  brethren  there,  that  he  had 
been  made  a  prisoner  by  the  French  on  his  way  from  Genoa. 
But  his  age,  and  the  indications  in  his  speech  and  manner  that 
he  was  of  a  different  class  from  the  ordinary  mendicants  and 
poor  travellers  who  were  entertained  in  the  hospital,  had  in- 
duced the  monks  to  offer  him  extra  charity  :  a  coarse  woollen 
tunic  to  protect  him  from  the  cold,  a  pair  of  peasant's  shoes, 
and  a  few  danari,  smallest  of  Florentine  coins,  to  help  him  on 


244  ROMOLA. 

his  way.  He  had  gone  on  the  road  to  Arezzo  early  in  the 
morning  ;  but  he  had  paused  at  the  first  little  town,  and  had 
used  a  couple  of  his  danari  to  get  himself  shaved,  and  to  have 
his  circle  of  hair  clipped  short,  in  his  former  fashion.  The 
barber  there  had  a  little  hand-mirror  of  bright  steel :  it  was  a 
long  while,  it  was  years,  since  Baldassarre  had  looked  at  him- 
self, and  now,  as  his  eyes  fell  on  that  hand-mirror,  a  new 
thought  shot  through  his  mind.  "  Was  he  so  changed  that 
Tito  really  did  not  know  him  ?  "  The  thought  was  such  a 
sudden  arrest  of  impetuous  currents,  that  it  was  a  painful 
shock  to  him  ;  his  hand  shook  like  a  leaf,  as  he  put  away  the 
barber's  arm  and  asked  for  the  mirror.  He  wished  to  see  him- 
self before  he  was  shaved.  The  barber,  noticing  his  tremu- 
lousness,  held  the  mirror  for  him. 

No,  he  was  not  so  changed  as  that.  He  himself  had  known 
the  wrinkles  as  they  had  been  three  years  ago  :  they  were 
only  deeper  now  :  there  was  the  same  rough,  clumsy  skin, 
making  little  superficial  bosses  on  the  brow,  like  so  many 
cipher-marks ;  the  skin  was  only  yellower,  only  looked  more 
like  a  lifeless  rind.  That  shaggy  white  beard  —  it  was  no 
disguise  to  eyes  that  had  looked  closely  at  him  for  sixteen 
years  —  to  eyes  that  ought  to  have  searched  for  him  with  the 
expectation  of  finding  him  changed,  as  men  search  for  the 
beloved  among  the  bodies  cast  up  by  the  waters.  There  was 
something  different  in  his  glance,  but  Lt  was  a  difference  that 
should  only  have  made  the  recognition  of  him  the  more  start- 
ling ;  for  is  not  a  known  voice  all  the  more  thrilling  when  it 
is  heard  as  a  cry  ?  But  the  doubt  was  folly  :  he  had  felt  that 
Tito  knew  him.  He  put  out  his  hand  and  pushed  the  mirror 
away.  The  strong  currents  were  rushing  on  again,  and  the 
energies  of  hatred  and  vengeance  were  active  once  more. 

He  went  back  on  the  way  towards  Florence  again,  but  he 
did  not  wish  to  enter  the  city  till  dusk ;  so  he  turned  aside 
from  the  highroad,  and  sat  down  by  a  little  pool  shadowed  on 
one  side  by  alder-bushes  still  sprinkled  with  yellow  leaves. 
It  was  a  calm  November  day,  and  he  no  sooner  saw  the  pool 
than  he  thought  its  still  surface  might  be  a  mirror  for  him. 
He  wanted  to  contemplate  himself  slowly,  as  he  had  not  dared 
to  do  in  the  presence  of  the  barber.  He  sat  down  on  the  edge 
of  the  pool,  and  bent  forward  to  look  earnestly  at  the  image 
of  himself. 

Was  there  something  wandering  and  imbecile  in  his  face  — 
something  like  what  he  felt  in  his  mind  ? 

Not  now  5  not  when  he  was  examining  himself  with  a  look 


THE  AVENGER'S  SECRET.  245 

of  eager  inquiry  :  on  the  contrary,  there  was  an  intense  pur- 
pose in  his  eyes.  But  at  other  times  ?  Yes,  it  must  be  so : 
in  the  long  hours  when  he  had  the  vague  aching  of  an  unre- 
membered  past  within  him  —  when  he  seemed  to  sit  in  dark 
loneliness,  visited  by  whispers  which  died  out  mockingly  as 
he  strained  his  ear  after  them,  and  by  forms  that  seemed  to 
approach  him  and  float  away  as  he  thrust  out  his  hand  to 
grasp  them  —  in  those  hours,  doubtless,  there  must  be  con- 
tinual frustration  and  amazement  in  his  glance.  And  more 
horrible  still,  when  the  thick  cloud  parted  for  a  moment,  and, 
as  he  sprang  forward  with  hope,  rolled  together  again,  and  left 
him  helpless  as  before  ;  doubtless,  there  was  then  a  blank 
confusion  in  his  face,  as  of  a  man  suddenly  smitten  with 
blindness. 

Could  he  prove  anything  ?  Could  he  even  begin  to  allege 
anything,  with  the  confidence  that  the  links  of  thought  would 
not  break  away  ?  Would  any  believe  that  he  had  ever  had  a 
mind  filled  with  rare  knowledge,  busy  with  close  thoughts, 
ready  with  various  speech  ?  It  had  all  slipped  away  from 
him  —  that  laboriously  gathered  store.  Was  it  utterly  and 
forever  gone  from  him,  like  the  waters  from  an  urn  lost  in  the 
wide  ocean  ?  Or,  was  it  still  within  him,  imprisoned  by  some 
obstruction  that  might  one  day  break  asunder  ? 

It  might  be  so ;  he  tried  to  keep  his  grasp  on  that  hope. 
For,  since  the  day  when  he  had  first  walked  feebly  from  his 
couch  of  straw,  and  had  felt  a  new  darkness  within  him  under 
the  sunlight,  his  mind  had  undergone  changes,  partly  gradual 
and  persistent,  partly  sudden  and  fleeting.  As  he  had  recov- 
ered his  strength  of  body,  he  had  recovered  his  self-command 
and  the  energy  of  his  will  ;  he  had  recovered  the  memory  of 
all  that  part  of  his  life  which  was  closely  inwrought  with  his 
emotions ;  and  he  had  felt  more  and  more  constantly  and 
painfully  the  uneasy  sense  of  lost  knowledge.  But  more  than 
that — once  or  twice,  when  he  had  been  strongly  excited,  he 
had  seemed  momentarily  to  be  in  entire  possession  of  his  past 
self,  as  old  men  doze  for  an  instant  and  get  back  the  conscious- 
ness of  their  youth :  he  seemed  again  to  see  Greek  pages  and 
understand  them,  again  to  feel  his  mind  moving  unbenumbed 
among  familiar  ideas.  It  had  been  but  a  flash,  and  the  dark- 
ness closing  in  again  seemed  the  more  horrible  ;  but  might  not 
the  same  thing  happen  again  for  longer  periods  ?  If  it  would 
only  come  and  stay  long  enough  for  him  to  achieve  a  revenge 
—  devise  an  exquisite  suffering,  such  as  a  mere  right  arm 
could  never  inflict ! 


246  ROM  OLA. 

He  raised  himself  from  his  stooping  attitude,  and,  folding 
his  arms,  attempted  to  concentrate  all  his  mental  force  on  the 
plan  he  must  immediately  pursue.  He  had  to  wait  for  knowl- 
edge and  opportunity,  and  while  he  waited  he  must  have  the 
means  of  living  without  beggary.  What  he  dreaded  of  all 
things  now  was,  that  any  one  should  think  him  a  foolish,  help- 
less old  man.  No  one  must  know  that  half  his  memory  was 
gone  :  the  lost  strength  might  come  again  ;  and  if  it  were  only 
for  a  little  while,  that  might  be  enough. 

He  knew  how  to  begin  to  get  the  information  he  wanted 
about  Tito.  He  had  repeated  the  words  "  Bratti  Ferravecchi " 
so  constantly  after  they  had  been  uttered  to  him,  that  they 
never  slipped  from  him  for  long  together.  A  man  at  Genoa, 
on  whose  finger  he  had  seen  Tito's  ring,  had  told  him  that  he 
bought  that  ring  at  Florence,  of  a  young  Greek,  well  dressed, 
and  with  a  handsome  dark  face,  in  the  shop  of  a  7'igattiere 
called  Bratti  Ferravecchi,  in  the  street  also  called  Ferravecchi. 
This  discovery  had  caused  a  violent  agitation  in  Baldassarre. 
Until  then  he  had  clung  with  all  the  tenacity  of  his  fervent 
nature  to  his  faith  in  Tito,  and  had  not  for  a  moment  believed 
himself  to  be  wilfully  forsaken.  At  first  he  had  said,  "  My 
bit  of  parchment  has  never  reached  him ;  that  is  why  I  am 
still  toiling  at  Antioch.  But  he  is  searching ;  he  knows  where 
I  was  lost :  he  will  trace  me  out  and  find  me  at  last."  Then, 
when  he  was  taken  to  Corinth,  he  induced  his  owners,  by  the 
assurance  that  he  should  be  sought  out  and  ransomed,  to  pro- 
vide securely  against  the  failure  of  any  inquiries  that  might 
be  made  about  him  at  Antioch ;  and  at  Corinth  he  thought 
joyfully,  "  Here,  at  last,  he  must  find  me.  Here  he  is  sure  to 
touch  whichever  way  he  goes."  But  before  another  year  had 
passed,  the  illness  had  come  from  which  he  had  risen  with 
body  and  mind  so  shattered  that  he  was  worse  than  worthless 
to  his  owners,  except  for  the  sake  of  the  ransom  that  did  not 
come.  Then,  as  he  sat  helpless  in  the  morning  sunlight,  he 
began  to  think,  "  Tito  has  been  drowned,  or  they  have  made 
him  a  prisoner  too.  I  shall  see  him  no  moi-e.  He  set  out 
after  me,  but  misfortune  overtook  him.  I  shall  see  his 
face  no  more."  Sitting  in  his  new  feebleness  and  de- 
spair, supporting  his  head  between  his  hands,  with  blank 
eyes  and  lips  that  moved  uncertainly,  he  looked  so  much 
like  a  hopelessly  imbecile  old  man,  that  his  OAvners  were 
contented  to  be  rid  of  him,  and  allowed  a  Genoese  mer- 
chant, who  had  comjiassion  on  him  as  an  Italian,  to  take 
him   on  board  his  galley.     In  a  voyage   of  many   months  in 


THE  AVENGER'S  SECRET.  247 

the  Archipelago  and  along  the  sea-board  of  Asia  Minor,  Bal- 
dassarre  had  recovered  his  bodily  strength,  but  on  landing  at 
Genoa  he  had  so  weary  a  sense  of  his  desolateness  that  he 
almost  wished  he  had  died  of  that  illness  at  Corinth.  There 
was  just  one  possibility  that  hindered  the  wish  from  being  de- 
cided :  it  was  that  Tito  might  not  be  dead,  but  living  in  a 
state  of  imprisonment  or  destitution ;  and  if  he  lived,  there 
was  still  a  hope  for  Baldassarre  —  faint,  perhaps,  and  likely 
to  be  long  deferred,  but  still  a  hope,  that  he  might  find  his 
child,  his  cherished  son  again ;  might  yet  again  clasp  hands 
and  meet  face  to  face  with  the  one  being  who  remembered  him 
as  he  had  been  before  his  mind  was  broken. 

In  this  state  of  feeling  he  had  chanced  to  meet  the  stranger 
who  wore  Tito's  onyx  ring,  and  though  Baldassarre  would 
have  been  unable  to  describe  the  ring  beforehand,  the  sight  of 
it  stirred  the  dormant  fibres,  and  he  recognized  it.  That  Tito 
nearly  a  year  after  his  father  had  been  parted  from  him  should 
have  been  living  in  apparent  prosperity  at  Florence,  selling 
the  gem  which  he  ought  not  to  have  sold  till  the  last  extremity, 
was  a  fact  that  Baldassarre  shrank  from  trying  to  account  for  : 
he  was  glad  to  be  stunned  and  bewildered  by  it,  rather  than 
to  have  any  distinct  thought ;  he  tried  to  feel  nothing  but  joy 
that  he  should  behold  Tito  again.  Perhaps  Tito  had  thought 
that  his  father  was  dead ;  somehow  the  mystery  would  be  ex- 
plained. "  But  at  least  I  shall  meet  eyes  that  will  remember 
me.     I  am  not  alone  in  the  world." 

And  now  again  Baldassarre  said.  ''  I  am  not  alone  in  the 
world ;  I  shall  never  be  alone,  for  my  revenge  is  with  me." 

It  was  as  the  instrument  of  that  revenge,  as  something 
merely  external  and  subservient  to  his  true  life,  that  he  bent 
down  again  to  examine  himself  with  hard  curiosity  —  not,  he 
thought,  because  he  had  any  care  for  a  withered,  forsaken  old 
man,  whom  nobody  loved,  whose  soul  was  like  a  deserted 
home,  where  the  ashes  were  cold  upon  the  hearth,  and  tlie 
walls  were  bare  of  all  but  the  marks  of  what  had  been.  It  is 
in  the  nature  of  all  human  passion,  the  lowest  as  well  as  the 
highest,  that  there  is  a  point  where  it  ceases  to  be  properly 
egoistic,  and  is  like  a  fire  kindled  within  our  being  to  which 
everything  else  in  us  is  mere  fuel. 

He  looked  at  the  pale  black-browed  image  in  the  water  till 
he  identified  it  with  that  self  from  which  his  revenge  seemed 
to  be  a  thing  apart ;  and  he  felt  as  if  the  image  too  heard  the 
silent  language  of  his  thought. 

"  I  was  a  loving  fool  —  I  worshipped  a  woman  once,  and 


248  ROMOLA. 

believed  she  could  care  for  me  ;  and  then  I  took  a  helpless 
child  and  fostered  iiim ;  and  I  watched  him  as  he  grew,  to  see 
if  he  would  care  for  me  only  a  little  —  care  for  me  over  and 
above  the  good  he  got  from  me.  I  would  have  torn  open  my 
breast  to  warm  him  with  my  life-blood  if  I  could  only  have 
seen  him  care  a  little  for  the  pain  of  my  wound.  I  have 
labored,  I  have  strained  to  crush  out  of  this  hard  life  one  drop 
of  unselfish  iove.  Fool !  men  love  their  own  delights  ;  there 
is  no  delight  to  be  had  in  me.  And  yet  I  watched  till  I  be- 
lieved I  saw  what  I  watched  for.  When  he  was  a  child  he 
lifted  soft  eyes  towards  me,  and  held  my  hand  willingly  :  I 
thought,  this  boy  will  surely  love  me  a  little :  because  I  give 
my  life  to  him  and  strive  that  he  shall  know  no  sorrow,  he  will 
care  a  little  when  I  am  thirsty  —  the  drop  he  lays  on  my 
parched  lips  will  be  a  joy  to  him.  .  .  .  Curses  on  him  !  I  wish 
I  may  see  him  lie  with  those  red  lips  white  and  dry  as  ashes, 
and  when  he  looks  for  pity  I  wish  he  may  see  my  face  re- 
joicing in  his  pain.  It  is  all  a  lie  —  this  world  is  a  lie  —  there 
is  no  goodness  but  in  hate.  Fool !  not  one  drop  of  love  came 
with  all  your  striving :  life  has  not  given  you  one  drop.  But 
there  are  deep  draughts  in  this  world  for  hatred  and  revenge. 
I  have  memory  left  for  that,  and  there  is  strength  in  my  arm 
—  there  is  strength  in  my  will  —  and  if  I  can  do  nothing  but 
kill  him  "  — 

But  Baldassarre's  mind  rejected  the  thought  of  that  brief 
punishment.  His  whole  soul  had  been  thrilled  into  immedi- 
ate unreasoning  belief  in  that  eternity  of  vengeance  where 
he,  an  undying  hate,  might  clutch  forever  an  undying  traitor, 
and  hear  that  fair  smiling  hardness  cry  and  moan  with  an- 
guish. But  the  primary  need  and  hope  was  to  see  a  slow 
revenge  under  the  same  sky  and  on  the  same  earth  where  he 
himself  had  been  forsaken  and  had  fainted  with  despair. 
And  as  soon  as  he  tried  to  concentrate  his  mind  on  the 
means  of  attaining  his  end,  the  sense  of  his  weakness  pressed 
upon  him  like  a  frosty  ache.  This  despised  body,  which  was 
to  be  the  instrument  of  a  sublime  vengeance,  must  be  nour- 
ished and  decently  clad.  If  he  had  to  wait  he  must  labor, 
and  his  labor  must  be  of  a  humble  sort,  for  he  had  no  skill. 
He  wondered  whether  the  sight  of  written  characters  would 
80  stimulate  his  faculties  that  he  might  venture  to  try  and  find 
work  as  a  copyist :  that  might  win  him  some  credence  for  his  past 
scholarship.  But  no !  he  dared  trust  neither  hand  nor  brain. 
He  must  be  content  to  do  the  work  that  was  most  like  that  of 
a  beast  of  burden :  in  this  mercantile  city  many  porters  must 


THE  AVENGER'S  SECRET.  249 

be  wanted,  and  he  could  at  least  carry  weights.  Thanks-  to 
the  justice  that  struggled  in  this  confused  world  in  behalf  of 
vengeance,  his  limbs  had  got  back  some  of  their  old  sturdi- 
ness.  He  was  stripped  of  all  else  that  men  would  give  coin  for. 
But  the  new  urgency  of  this  habitual  thought  brought  a 
new  suggestion.  There  was  something  hanging  by  a  cord 
round  his  bare  neck ;  something  apparently  so  paltry  that  the 
piety  of  Turks  and  Frenchmen  had  spared  it  —  a  tiny  parch- 
ment bag  blackened  with  age.  It  had  hang  round  his  neck 
as  a  precious  charm  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  he  had  kept  it 
carefully  on  his  breast,  not  believing  that  it  contained  any- 
thing but  a  tiny  scroll  of  parchment  rolled  up  hard.  He 
might  long  ago  have  thrown  it  away  as  a  relic  of  his  dead 
mother's  superstition ;  but  he  had  thought  of  it  as  a  relic  of 
her  love,  and  had  kept  it.  It  was  part  of  the  piety  asso- 
ciated with  such  hrevi,  that  they  should  never  be  opened,  and 
at  any  previous  moment  in  his  life  Baldassarre  would  have 
said  that  no  sort  of  thirst  would  prevail  upon  him  to  open 
this  little  bag  for  the  chance  of  finding  that  it  contained,  not 
parchment,  but  an  engraved  amulet  which  would  be  worth 
money.  But  now  a  thirst  had  come  like  that  which  makes 
men  open  their  own  veins  to  satisfy  it,  and  the  thought  of 
the  possible  amulet  no  sooner  crossed  Baldassarre's  mind  than 
with  nervous  fingers  he  snatched  the  breve  from  his  neck.  It 
all  rushed  through  his  mind  —  the  long  years  he  had  worn  it, 
the  far-off  sunny  balcony  at  Naples  looking  towards  the  blue 
waters,  where  he  had  leaned  against  his  mother's  knee  ;  but 
it  made  no  moment  of  hesitation :  all  piety  now  was  trans- 
muted into  a  just  revenge.  He  bit  and  tore  till  the  doubles 
of  parchment  were  laid  open,  and  then  —  it  was  a  sight  that 
made  him  pant  —  there  was  an  amulet.  It  was  very  small, 
but  it  was  as  blue  as  those  far-off  waters ;  it  was  an  engraved 
sapphire,  which  must  be  worth  some  gold  ducats.  Baldassarre 
no  sooner  saw  those  possible  ducats  than  he  saw  some  of 
them  exchanged  for  a  poniard.  He  did  not  want  to  use  the 
poniard  yet,  but  he  longed  to  possess  it.  If  he  could  grasp  its 
handle  and  try  its  edge,  that  blank  in  his  mind  —  that  past 
which  fell  away  continually  —  would  not  make  him  feel  so 
cruelly  helpless :  the  sharp  steel  that  despised  talents  and 
eluded  strength  would  be  at  his  side,  as  the  unfailing  friend 
of  feeble  justice.  There  was  a  sparkling  triumph  under 
Baldassarre's  black  eyebrows  as  he  replaced  the  little  sapphire 
inside  the  bits  of  parchment  and  wound  the  string  tightl/ 
round  them. 


250  ROMOLA. 

It  was  nearly  dusk  now,  and  he  rose  to  walk  back  towards 
Florence.  With  his  danari  to  buy  him  some  bread,  he  felt 
rich:  he  could  lie  out  in  the  open  air,  as  he  found  plenty 
more  doing  in  all  corners  of  Florence.  And  in  the  next  few 
days  he  had  sold  his  sapphire,  had  added  to  his  clothing,  had 
bought  a  bright  dagger,  and  had  still  a  pair  of  gold  florins 
left.  But  he  meant  to  hoard  that  treasure  carefully :  his 
lodging  was  an  outhouse  with  a  heap  of  straw  in  it,  in  a 
thinly  inhabited  part  of  Oltrarno,  and  he  thought  of  looking 
about  for  work  as  a  porter. 

He  had  bought  his  dagger  at  Bratti's.  Paying  his  medi- 
tated  visit  there  one  evening  at  dusk,  he  had  found  that  sin- 
gular rag-merchant  just  returned  from  one  of  his  rounds, 
emptying  out  his  basketful  of  broken  glass  and  old  iron 
amongst  his  handsome  show  of  miscellaneous  second-hand 
goods.  As  Baldassarre  entered  the  shop,  and  looked  towards 
the  smart  pieces  of  apparel,  the  musical  instruments,  and 
weapons,  which  were  displayed  in  the  broadest  light  of  the 
window,  his  eye  at  once  singled  out  a  dagger  hanging  up  high 
against  a  red  scarf.  By  buying  the  dagger  he  could  not  only 
satisfy  a  strong  desire,  he  could  open  his  original  errand  in  a 
more  indirect  manner  than  by  speaking  of  the  onyx  ring.  In 
the  course  of  bargaining  for  the  weapon,  he  let  drop,  with 
cautious  carelessness,  that  he  came  from  Genoa,  and  had  been 
directed  to  Bratti's  shop  by  an  acquaintance  in  that  city  who 
had  bought  a  very  valuable  ring  here.  Had  the  respectable 
trader  any  more  such  rings  ? 

Whereupon  Bratti  had  much  to  say  as  to  the  unlikelihood  of 
such  rings  being  within  reach  of  many  people,  with  much 
vaunting  of  his  own  rare  connections,  due  to  his  known  wis- 
dom and  honesty.  It  might  be  true  that  he  was  a  pedler  — 
he  chose  to  be  a  pedler ;  though  he  was  rich  enough  to  kick 
his  heels  in  his  shop  all  day.  But  those  who  thought  they 
had  said  all  there  was  to  be  said  about  Bratti  when  they  had 
called  him  a  pedler,  were  a  good  deal  further  off  the  truth 
than  the  other  side  of  Pisa.  How  was  it  that  he  could  put 
that  ring  in  a  stranger's  way  ?  It  was,  because  he  had  a  very 
particular  knowledge  of  a  handsome  young  signor,  who  did 
not  look  quite  so  fine  a  feathered  bird  when  Bratti  first  set 
eyes  on  him  as  he  did  at  the  present  time.  And  by  a  ques- 
tion or  two  Baldassarre  extracted,  without  any  trouble,  such 
a  rough  and  rambling  account  of  Tito's  life  as  the  pedler 
could  give,  since  the  time  when  he  had  found  him  sleeping 
under  the    Loggia   de'    Cerchi.     It   never  occurred  to  Bratti 


THE  AVENGER'S  SECRET.  251 

that  the  decent  man  (who  was  rather  deaf,  apparently,  asking 
him  to  say  many  things  twice  over)  had  any  curiosity  about 
Tito ;  the  curiosity  was  doubtless  about  himself,  as  a  truly 
remarkable  pedler. 

And  Baldassarre  left  Bratti's  shop,  not  only  with  the  dagger 
at  his  side,  but  also  with  a  general  knowledge  of  Tito's  con- 
duct and  position  —  of  his  early  sale  of  the  jewels,  his  imme- 
diate quiet  settlement  of  himself  at  Florence,  his  marriage, 
and  his  great  prosperity. 

"  What  story  had  he  told  about  his  previous  life  —  about 
his  father  ?  " 

It  would  be  difficult  for  Baldassarre  to  discover  the  answer 
to  that  question.  Meanwhile,  he  wanted  to  learn  all  he 
could  about  Florence.  But  he  found,  to  his  acute  distress, 
that  of  the  new  details  he  learned  he  could  only  retain  a 
few,  and  those  only  by  continual  repetition  ;  and  he  began 
to  be  afraid  of  listening  to  any  new  discourse,  lest  it  should 
obliterate  what  he  was  already  striving  to  remember. 

The  day  he  was  discerned  by  Tito  in  the  Piazza  del  Duomo, 
he  had  the  fresh  anguish  of  this  consciousness  in  his  mind, 
and  Tito's  ready  speech  fell  upon  him  like  the  mockery  of  a 
glib,  defying  demon. 

As  he  went  home  to  his  heap  of  straw,  and  passed  by  the 
booksellers'  shops  in  the  Via  del  Garbo,  he  paused  to  look  at 
the  volumes  spread  open.  Could  he  by  long  gazing  at  one  of 
those  books  lay  hold  of  the  slippery  threads  of  memory  ? 
Could  he,  by  striving,  get  a  firm  grasp  somewhere,  and  lift 
himself  above  these  waters  that  flowed  over  him  ? 

He  was  tempted,  and  bought  the  cheapest  Greek  book  he 
could  see.  He  carried  it  home  and  sat  on  his  heap  of  straw, 
looking  at  the  characters  by  the  light  of  the  small  window ; 
but  no  inward  light  arose  on  them.  Soon  the  evening  dark- 
ness came  ;  but  it  made  little  difference  to  Baldassarre.  His 
strained  eyes  seemed  still  to  see  the  white  pages  with  the 
unintelligible  black  marks  upon  them. 


252  ROMOLA. 


CHAPTER   XXXI. 

FRUIT    IS    SEED. 

"  My  Romola,"  said  Tito,  the  second  morning  after  he  had 
made  his  speech  in  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  "  I  am  to  receive 
grand  visitors  to-day ;  the  Milanese  Count  is  coming  again, 
and  the  Seneschal  de  Beaucaire,  the  great  favorite  of  the 
Cristianissimo.  I  know  you  don't  care  to  go  through  smiling 
ceremonies  with  these  rustling  magnates,  whom  we  are  not 
likely  to  see  again ;  and  as  they  will  want  to  look  at  the  antiq- 
uities and  the  libraiy,  perhaps  you  had  better  give  up  your 
work  to-day,  and  go  to  see  your  cousin  Brigida." 

Romola  discerned  a  wish  in  this  intimation,  and  immedi- 
ately assented.  But  presently,  coming  back  in  her  hood  and 
mantle,  she  said,  "  Oh,  what  a  long  breath  Florence  will  take 
when  the  gates  are  flung  open,  and  the  last  Frenchman  is 
walking  out  of  them !  Even  you  are  getting  tired,  with  all 
your  patience,  my  Tito ;  confess  it.     Ah,  your  head  is  hot." 

He  was  leaning  over  his  desk,  writing,  and  she  had  laid  her 
hand  on  his  head,  meaning  to  give  a  parting  caress.  The  atti- 
tude had  been  a  frequent  one,  and  Tito  was  accustomed,  when 
he  felt  her  hand  there,  to  raise  his  head,  throw  himself  a  little 
backward,  and  look  up  at  her.  But  he  felt  now  as  unable  to 
raise  his  head  as  if  her  hand  had  been  a  leaden  cowl.  He 
spoke  instead,  in  a  light  tone,  as  his  pen  still  ran  along. 

"  The  French  are  as  ready  to  go  from  Florence  as  the  wasps 
to  leave  a  ripe  pear  when  they  have  just  fastened  on  it." 

Romola,  keenly  sensitive  to  the  absence  of  the  usual 
response,  took  away  her  hand  and  said,  "I  am  going,  Tito." 

"  Farewell,  my  sweet  one.  I  must  wait  at  home.  Take 
Maso  with  you." 

Still  Tito  did  not  look  up,  and  Romola  went  out  without 
saying  any  more.  Very  slight  things  make  epochs  in  mar- 
ried life,  and  this  morning  for  the  first  time  she  admitted  to 
herself  not  only  that  Tito  had  changed,  but  that  he  had 
changed  towards  her.  Did  the  reason  lie  in  herself  ?  She 
might  perhaps  have  thought  so,  if  there  had  not  been  the  facts 
of  the  armor  and  the  ])icture  to  suggest  some  external  event 
which  was  an  entire  mystery  to  her. 


FRUIT  IS  SEED.  253 

But  Tito  no  sooner  believed  that  Romola  was  out  of  tlie 
house  than  he  laid  down  his  pen  and  looked  up,  in  delightful 
security  from  seeing  anything  else  than  parchment  and  broken 
marble.  He  was  rather  disgusted  with  himself  that  he  had 
not  been  able  to  look  up  at  Eomola  and  behave  to  her  just  as 
usual.  He  would  have  chosen,  if  he  could,  to  be  even  more 
than  usually  kind ;  but  he  could  not,  on  a  sudden,  master  ar. 
involuntary  shrinking  from  her,  which,  by  a  subtle  relation , 
depended  on  those  very  characteristics  in  him  that  made  him 
desire  not  to  fail  in  his  marks  of  affection.  He  was  about  to 
take  a  step  which  he  knew  would  arouse  her  deep  indigna- 
tion ;  he  would  have  to  encounter  much  that  was  unpleasant 
before  he  could  win  her  forgiveness.  And  Tito  could  never 
find  it  easy  to  face  displeasure  and  anger ;  his  nature  was  one 
of  those  most  remote  from  defiance  or  impudence,  and  all  his 
inclinations  leaned  towards  preserving  Romola's  tenderness. 
He  was  not  tormented  by  sentimental  scruples  which,  as  he 
had  demonstrated  to  himself  by  a  very  rapid  course  of  argu- 
ment, had  no  relation  to  solid  utility ;  but  his  freedom  from 
scruples  did  not  release  him  from  the  dread  of  what  was  dis- 
agreeable. Unscrupulousness  gets  rid  of  much,  but  not  of 
toothache,  or  wounded  vanity,  or  the  sense  of  loneliness, 
against  which,  as  the  world  at  present  stands,  there  is  no 
security  but  a  thoroughly  healthy  jaw,  and  a  just,  loving  soul. 
And  Tito  was  feeling  intensely  at  this  moment  that  no  devices 
could  save  him  from  pain  in  the  impending  collision  with 
Romola ;  no  persuasive  blandness  could  cushion  him  against 
the  shock  towards  which  he  was  being  driven  like  a  timid 
animal  urged  to  a  desperate  leap  by  the  terror  of  the  tooth 
and  the  claw  that  are  close  behind  it. 

The  secret  feeling  he  had  previously  had  that  the  tenacious 
adherence  to  Bardo's  wishes  about  the  library  had  become 
under  existing  difficulties  a  piece  of  sentimental  folly,  which 
deprived  himself  and  Romola  of  substantial  advantages, 
might  perhaps  never  have  wrought  itself  into  action  but  for 
the  events  of  the  past  week,  which  had  brought  at  once  the 
pressure  of  a  new  motive  and  the  outlet  of  a  rare  opportunity. 
Nay,  it  was  not  till  his  dread  had  been  aggravated  by  the  sight 
of  Baldassarre  looking  more  like  his  sane  self,  not  until  he 
had  begun  to  feel  that  he  might  be  compelled  to  flee  from 
Florence,  that  he  had  brought  himself  to  resolve  on  using  his 
legal  right  to  sell  the  library  before  the  great  opportunity 
offered  by  French  and  Milanese  bidders  slipped  through  his 
fingers.     For  if  he  had  to  leave  Florence  he  did  not  want  to 


254  ROMOLA. 

leave  it  as  a  destitute  wanderer.  He  had  been  used  to  an 
agreeable  existence,  and  lie  wished  to  carry  with  him  all  the 
means  at  hand  for  retaining  the  same  agreeable  conditions. 
He  wished  among  other  things  to  carry  Romola  with  him,  and 
not,  if  possible,  to  carry  any  infamy.  Success  had  given  him 
a  growing  appetite  for  all  the  pleasures  that  depend  on  an 
advantageous  social  position,  and  at  no  moment  could  it  look 
like  a  temptation  to  him,  but  only  like  a  hideous  alternative, 
to  decamp  under  dishonor,  even  with  a  bag  of  diamonds,  and 
incur  the  life  of  an  adventurer.  It  was  not  possible  for  him 
to  make  himself  independent  even  of  those  Florentines  who 
only  greeted  him  with  regard ;  still  less  was  it  possible  for 
him  to  make  himself  independent  of  Romola.  She  was  the 
wife  of  his  first  love  —  he  loved  her  still ;  she  belonged  to 
that  furniture  of  life  which  he  shrank  from  parting  with.  He 
winced  under  her  judgment,  he  felt  uncertain  how  far  the 
revulsion  of  her  feeUng  towards  him  might  go  ;  and  all  that 
sense  of  power  over  a  wife  which  makes  a  husband  risk  be- 
trayals that  a  lover  never  ventures  on,  would  not  suffice  to 
counteract  Tito's  uneasiness.  This  was  the  leaden  weight 
which  had  been  too  strong  for  his  will,  and  kept  him  from 
raising  his  head  to  meet  her  eyes.  Their  pure  light  brought 
too  near  him  the  prospect  of  a  coming  struggle.  But  it 
was  not  to  be  helped ;  if  they  had  to  leav^e  Florence,  they 
must  have  money  ;  indeed,  Tito  could  not  arrange  life  at  all 
to  his  mind  without  a  considerable  sum  of  money.  And  that 
problem  of  arranging  life  to  his  mind  had  been  the  source  of 
all  his  misdoing.  He  would  have  been  equal  to  any  sacrifice 
that  was  not  unpleasant. 

The  rustling  magnates  came  and  went,  the  bargains  had 
been  concluded,  and  Romola  returned  home ;  but  nothing 
grave  was  said  that  night.  Tito  was  only  gay  and  chatty, 
pouring  forth  to  her,  as  he  had  not  done  before,  stories  and 
descriptions  of  what  he  had  witnessed  during  the  French 
visit.  Romola  thought  she  discerned  an  effort  in  his  liveli- 
ness, and  attributing  it  to  the  consciousness  in  him  that  she 
had  been  wounded  in  the  morning,  accepted  the  effort  as  an 
act  of  penitence,  inwardly  aching  a  little  at  that  sign  of  grow- 
ing distance  between  them  —  that  there  was  an  offence  about 
which  neither  of  them  dared  to  speak. 

The  next  day  Tito  remained  away  from  home  until  late  at 
night.  It  was  a  marked  day  to  Romola,  for  Piero  di  Cosimo, 
stimulated  to  greater  industry  on  her  behalf  by  the  fear  that 
he  might  have  been  the  cause  of  pain  to  her  in  the  past  week, 


FRUIT  IS  SEED.  255 

had  sent  home  her  father's  portrait.  She  had  propped  it 
against  the  back  of  his  old  chair,  and  had  been  looking  at  it 
for  some  time,  when  the  door  opened  behind  her,  and  Bernardo 
del  Nero  came  in. 

"  It  is  you,  godfather !  How  I  wish  yoM.  had  come  sooner  ! 
it  is  getting  a  little  dusk,"  said  Romola,  going  towards  him. 

"  I  have  just  looked  in  to  tell  you  the  good  news,  for  I 
know  Tito  has  not  come  3''et,"  said  Bernardo.  "  The  French 
king  moves  off  to-morrow  :  not  before  it  is  high  time.  There 
has  been  another  tussle  between  our  people  and  his  soldiers 
this  morning.  But  there's  a  chance  now  of  the  city  getting 
into  order  once  more  and  trade  going  on." 

''  That  is  joyful,"  said  Komola.  "  But  it  is  sudden,  is  it 
not  ?  Tito  seemed  to  think  yesterday  that  there  was  little 
prospect  of  the  king's  going  soon." 

"  He  has  been  well  barked  at,  that's  the  reason,"  said  Ber- 
nardo, smiling.  "  His  own  generals  opened  their  throats 
pretty  well,  and  at  last  our  Signoria  sent  the  mastiff  of  the 
city,  Fra  Girolamo.  The  Cristianissimo  was  frightened  at 
that  thunder,  and  has  given  the  order  to  move.  I'm  afraid 
there'll  be  small  agreement  among  us  when  he's  gone,  but,  at 
any  rate,  all  parties  are  agreed  in  being  glad  not  to  have  Flor- 
ence stifled  with  soldiery  any  longer,  and  the  Frate  has  barked 
this  time  to  some  purpose.  Ah,  what  is  this  ?  "  he  added,  as 
Romola,  clasping  him  by  the  arm,  led  him  in  front  of  the 
picture.     "  Let  us  see." 

He  began  to  unwind  his  long  scarf  while  she  placed  a  seat 
for  him. 

"  Don't  you  want  your  spectacles,  godfather?  "  said  Eomola, 
in  anxiety  that  he  should  see  just  what  she  saw. 

'•'  No,  child,  no,"  said  Bernardo,  uncovering  his  gray  head, 
as  he  seated  himself  with  firm  erectness.  "  For  seeing  at  this 
distance,  my  old  eyes  are  perhaps  better  than  your  young 
ones.  Old  men's  eyes  are  like  old  men's  memories ;  they  are 
strongest  for  things  a  long  way  off." 

"  It  is  better  than  having  no  portrait,"  said  Romola,  apolo- 
getically, after  Bernardo  had  been  silent  a  little  while.  "  It  is 
less  like  him  now  than  the  image  I  have  in  my  mind,  but  then 
that  might  fade  with  the  years."  She  rested  her  arm  on  the 
old  man's  shoulder  as  she  spoke,  drawn  towards  him  strongly 
by  their  common  interest  in  the  dead. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Bernardo.  "  I  almost  think  I  see 
Bardo  as  he  was  when  he  was  young,  better  than  this  picture 
shows  him  to  me  as  he  was  when  he  was  old.     Your  father 


256  ROMOLA. 

had  a  great  deal  of  fire  in  his  eyes  when  he  was  young.  It 
was  what  I  could  never  understand,  that  he,  with  his  fiery 
spirit,  which  seemed  much  more  impatient  than  mine,  could 
hang  over  the  books  and  live  with  shadows  all  his  life. 
However,  he  had  put  his  heart  into  that." 

Bernardo  gave  a  slight  shrug  as  he  spoke  the  last  words, 
but  Romola  discerned  in  his  voice  a  feeling  that  accorded 
with  her  own. 

"And  he  was  disappointed  to  the  last,"  she  said,  involun- 
tarily. But  immediately  fearing  lest  her  words  should  be 
taken  to  imply  an  accusation  against  Tito,  she  went  on  almost 
hurriedly,  "If  we  could  only  see  his  longest,  dearest  wish 
fulfilled  just  to  his  mind  !  " 

"  Well,  so  we  may,"  said  Bernardo,  kindly,  rising  and  put- 
ting on  his  cap.  "  The  times  are  cloudy  now,  but  fish  are 
caught  by  waiting.  Who  knows  ?  When  the  wheel  has 
turned  often  enough,  I  may  be  Gonfaloniere  yet  before  I  die  ; 
and  no  creditor  can  touch  these  things."  He  looked  round  as 
he  spoke.  Then,  turning  to  her,  and  patting  her  cheeks,  said, 
"  And  you  need  not  be  afraid  of  my  dying  ;  my  ghost  will 
claim  nothing.     I've  taken  care  of  that  in  my  will." 

Romola  seized  the  hand  that  was  against  her  cheek,  and 
put  it  to  her  lips  in  silence. 

"  Haven't  you  been  scolding  your  husband  for  keeping  away 
from  home  so  much  lately  ?  I  see  him  everywhere  but  here," 
said  Bernardo,  willing  to  change  the  subject. 

She  felt  the  flush  spread  over  her  neck  and  face  as  she  said, 
"He  has  been  very  much  wanted;  you  know  he  speaks  so 
well.     I  am  glad  to  know  that  his  value  is  understood." 

"  You  are  contented  then.  Madonna  Orgogliosa  ? "  said 
Bernardo,  smiling,  as  he  moved  to  the  door. 

"  Assuredly." 

Poor  Romola !  There  was  one  thing  that  would  have  made 
the  pang  of  disappointment  in  her  husband  harder  to  bear ;  it 
was,  that  any  one  should  know  he  gave  her  cause  for  disap- 
pointment. This  might  be  a  woman's  weakness,  but  it  is 
closely  allied  to  a  woman's  nobleness.  She  who  willingly  lifts 
up  the  veil  of  her  married  life  has  profaned  it  from  a  sanctu- 
ary into  a  vulgar  place. 


A   REVELATION.  257 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

A    REVELATION". 

The  next  day  Roinola,  like  every  other  Florentine,  was 
excited  about  the  departure  of  the  French.  Besides  her  other 
reasons  for  gladness,  she  had  a  dim  hope,  which  she  was  con- 
scious was  half  superstitious,  that  those  new  anxieties  about 
Tito,  having  come  with  the  burdensome  guests,  might  perhaps 
vanish  with  them.  The  French  had  been  in  Florence  hardly 
eleven  days,  but  in  that  space  she  had  felt  more  acute  unhap- 
piness  than  she  had  known  in  her  life  before.  Tito  had 
adopted  the  hateful  armor  on  the  day  of  their  arrival,  and 
though  she  could  frame  no  distinct  notion  why  their  departure 
should  remove  the  cause  of  his  fear  —  though,  when  she 
thought  of  that  cause,  the  image  of  the  prisoner  grasping  hiia, 
as  she  had  seen  it  in  Piero's  sketch,  urged  itself  before  her 
and  excluded  every  other  —  still,  when  the  French  were  gone, 
she  would  be  rid  of  something  that  was  strongly  associated 
with  her  pain. 

Wrapped  in  her  mantle  she  waited  under  the  loggia  at  the 
top  of  the  house,  and  watched  for  the  glimpses  of  the  troops 
and  the  royal  retinue  passing  the  bridges  on  their  way  to  the 
Porta  San  Piero,  that  looks  towards  Siena  and  Rome.  She 
even  returned  to  her  station  when  the  gates  had  been  closed, 
that  she  might  feel  herself  vibrating  with  the  great  peal  of 
the  bells.  It  was  dusk  then,  and  when  at  last  she  descended 
into  the  library,  she  lit  her  lamp  with  the  resolution  that  she 
would  overcome  the  agitation  which  had  made  her  idle  all 
day,  and  sit  down  to  work  at  her  copying  of  the  catalogue. 
Tito  had  left  home  early  in  the  morning,  and  she  did  not 
expect  him  yet.  Before  he  came  she  intended  to  leave  the 
library,  and  sit  in  the  pretty  saloon,  with  the  dancing  nymphs 
and  the  birds.  She  had  done  so  every  evening  since  he  had 
objected  to  the  library  as  chill  and  gloomy. 

To  her  great  surprise,  she  had  not  been  at  work  long  before 
Tito  entered.  Her  first  thought  was,  how  cheerless  he  would 
feel  in  the  wide  darkness  of  this  great  room,  with  one  little 
oil-lamp  burning  at  the  farther  end,  and  the  fire  nearly  out. 
She  almost  ran  towards  him. 


258  ROMOLA. 

"  Tito,  dearest,  I  did  not  know  j^ou  would  come  so  soon," 
she  said,  nervously,  putting  up  her  white  arms  to  unwind  his 
becchetto. 

"  I  am  not  welcome  then  ?  "  he  said,  with  one  of  his  bright- 
est smiles,  clasping  her,  but  playfully  holding  his  head  back 
from  her. 

"Tito  !  "  She  uttered  the  word  in  a  tone  of  pretty,  loving 
reproach,  and  then  he  kissed  her  fondly,  stroked  her  hair,  as 
his  manner  was,  and  seemed  not  to  mind  about  taking  off  his 
mantle  yet.  Romola  quivered  with  delight.  All  the  emotions 
of  the  day  had  been  preparing  in  her  a  keener  sensitiveness 
to  the  return  of  this  habitual  manner.  "  It  will  come  back," 
she  was  saying  to  herself,  "  the  old  happiness  will  perhaps 
come  back.     He  is  like  himself  again." 

Tito  was  taking  great  pains  to  be  like  himself ;  his  heart 
was  palpitating  with  anxiety. 

"  If  I  had  expected  you  so  soon,"  said  Romola,  as  she  at 
last  helped  him  to  take  off  his  wrappings,  "  I  would  have  had 
a  little  festival  prepared  to  this  joyful  ringing  of  the  bells. 
I  did  not  mean  to  be  here  in  the  library  when  you  came 
home." 

"  Never  mind,  sweet,"  he  said,  carelessly.  "  Do  not  think 
about  the  fire.     Come  —  come  and  sit  down." 

There  was  a  low  stool  against  Tito's  chair,  and  that  was 
Romola's  habitual  seat  when  they  were  talking  together.  She 
rested  her  arm  on  his  knee,  as  she  used  to  do  on  her  father's, 
and  looked  up  at  him  while  he  spoke.  He  had  never  yet  noticed 
the  presence  of  the  portrait,  and  she  had  not  mentioned  it  — 
thinking  of  it  all  the  more. 

"  I  have  been  enjoying  the  clang  of  the  bells  for  the  first 
time,  Tito,"  she  began.  "  I  liked  being  shaken  and  deafened 
by  them  :  I  fancied  I  was  something  like  a  Bacchante  possessed 
by  a  divine  rage.  Are  not  the  people  looking  very  joyful 
to-night  ?  " 

"  Joyful  after  a  sour  and  pious  fashion,"  said  Tito,  with  a 
shrug.  "  But,  in  truth,  those  who  are  left  behind  in  Florence 
have  little  cause  to  be  joyful :  it  seems  to  me,  the  most  rea- 
sonable ground  of  gladness  would  be  to  have  got  out  of 
Florence." 

Tito  had  sounded  the  desired  keynote  without  any  trouble, 
or  appearance  of  premeditation.  He  spoke  with  no  emphasis, 
but  he  looked  grave  enough  to  make  Romola  ask  rather 
anxiously,  — 

"  Why,  Tito  ?     Are  there  fresh  troubles  ?  " 


A   REVELATION.  259 

"  No  need  of  fresh  ones,  my  Romola.  There  are  three  strong 
parties  in  the  city,  all  ready  to  fly  at  each  other's  throats 
And  if  the  Frate's  party  is  strong  enough  to  frighten  the 
other  two  into  silence,  as  seems  most  likely,  life  will  be  as 
pleasant  and  amusing  as  a  funeral.  They  have  the  plan  of  a 
Great  Council  simmering  already  ;  and  if  they  get  it,  the 
man  who  sings  sacred  Lauds  the  loudest  will  be  the  most 
eligible  for  office.  And  besides  that,  the  city  will  be  so 
drained  by  the  payment  of  this  great  subsidy  to  the  French 
king,  and  by  the  war  to  get  back  Pisa,  that  the  prospect 
would  be  dismal  enough  without  the  rule  of  fanatics.  On  the 
whole,  Florence  will  be  a  delightful  place  for  those  worthies 
who  entertain  themselves  in  the  evening  by  going  into  crypts 
and  lashing  themselves ;  but  for  everything  else,  the  exiles 
have  the  best  of  it.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  been  thinking 
seriously  that  we  should  be  wise  to  quit  Florence,  my 
Romola." 

She  started.  "  Tito,  how  could  we  leave  Florence  ?  Surely 
you  do  not  think  I  could  leave  it  —  at  least,  not  yet  —  not 
for  a  long  while."  She  had  turned  cold  and  trembling,  and 
did  not  find  it  quite  easy  to  speak.  Tito  must  know  the 
reasons  she  had  in  her  mind. 

"  That  is  all  a  fabric  of  your  own  imagination,  my  sweet 
one.  Your  secluded  life  has  made  you  lay  such  false  stress 
on  a  few  things.  You  know  I  used  to  tell  you,  before  we  were 
married,  that  I  wished  we  were  somewhere  else  than  in  Flor- 
ence. If  you  had  seen  more  places  and  more  people,  you 
would  know  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  there  is  something 
in  the  Florentines  that  reminds  me  of  their  cutting  spring 
winds.  I  like  people  who  take  life  less  eagerly ;  and  it  would 
be  good  for  my  Romola,  too,  to  see  a  new  life.  I  should  like 
to  dip  her  a  little  in  the  soft  waters  of  forgetfulness." 

He  leaned  forward  and  kissed  her  brow,  and  laid  his  hand 
on  her  fair  hair  again  ;  but  she  felt  his  caress  no  more  than  if 
he  had  kissed  a  mask.  She  was  too  much  agitated  by  the 
sense  of  the  distance  between  their  minds  to  be  conscious  that 
his  lips  touched  her. 

"Tito,  it  is  not  because  I  suppose  Florence  is  the  pleasant- 
est  place  in  the  world  that  I  desire  not  to  quit  it.  It  is 
because  I  —  because  we  have  to  see  my  father's  wish  fulfilled. 
My  godfather  is  old ;  he  is  seventy-one  ;  we  could  not  leave  it 
to  him." 

"  It  is  precisely  those  superstitions  which  hang  about  your 
mind  like  bedimming  clouds,  my  Romola,  that  make  one  great 


260  ROMOLA. 

reason  why  I  could  wish  we  were  two  hundred  leagues  from 
Florence.  I  am  obliged  to  take  care  of  you  in  opposition  to 
your  own  will :  if  those  dear  eyes,  that  look  so  tender,  see 
falsely,  I  must  see  for  them,  and  save  my  wife  from  wasting 
her  life  in  disappointing  herself  by  impracticable  dreams." 

Romola  sat  silent  and  motionless  :  she  could  not  blind  her- 
self to  the  direction  in  which  Tito's  words  pointed :  he  wanted 
to  persuade  her  that  they  might  get  the  library  deposited  in 
some  monastery,  or  take  some  other  ready  means  to  rid  them- 
selves of  a  task,  and  of  a  tie  to  Florence ;  and  she  was  deter- 
mined never  to  submit  her  mind  to  his  judgment  on  this  ques- 
tion of  duty  to  her  father;  she  was  inwardly  prepared  to 
encounter  any  sort  of  pain  in  resistance.  But  the  determina- 
tion was  kept  latent  in  these  first  moments  by  the  heart-crush- 
ing sense  that  now  at  last  she  and  Tito  must  be  confessedly 
divided  in  their  wishes.  He  was  glad  of  her  silence ;  for, 
much  as  he  had  feared  the  strength  of  her  feeling,  it  was  im- 
possible for  him,  shut  up  in  the  narrowness  that  hedges  in  all 
merely  clever,  unimpassioned  men,  not  to  overestimate  the 
persuasiveness  of  his  own  arguments.  His  conduct  did  not 
look  ugly  to  himself,  and  his  imagination  did  not  suffice  to 
show  him  exactly  how  it  would  look  to  Romola.  He  went  on 
in  the  same  gentle,  remonstrating  tone. 

"You  know,  dearest — your  own  clear  judgment  always 
showed  you  —  that  the  notion  of  isolating  a  collection  of 
books  and  antiquities,  and  attaching  a  single  name  to  them  for- 
ever, was  one  that  had  no  valid,  substantial  good  for  its  object : 
and  yet  more,  one  that  was  liable  to  be  defeated  in  a  thousand 
ways.  See  what  has  become  of  the  Medici  collections  !  And, 
for  my  part,  I  consider  it  even  blameworthy  to  entertain  those 
petty  views  of  appropriation  :  why  should  any  one  be  reason- 
ably glad  that  Florence  should  possess  the  benefits  of  learned 
research  and  taste  more  than  any  other  city  ?  I  understand 
your  feeling  about  the  wishes  of  the  dead  ;  but  wisdom  puts 
a  limit  to  these  sentiments,  else  lives  might  be  continually 
wasted  in  that  sort  of  futile  devotion — like  praising  deaf 
gods  forever.  You  gave  your  life  to  your  father  while  he 
lived ;  why  should  you  demand  more  of  yourself  ?  " 

"  Because  it  was  a  trust,"  said  Romola,  in  a  low  but  distinct 
voice.  "  He  trusted  me,  he  trusted  you,  Tito.  I  did  not  ex- 
pect you  to  feel  anything  else  about  it  —  to  feel  as  I  do  —  but 
I  did  expect  you  to  feel  that." 

"  Yes,  dearest,  of  course  I  should  feel  it  on  a  point  where 
your  father's  real   welfare  or  happiness   was  concerned;  but 


A   REVELATION.  261 

there  is  no  question  of  that  now.  If  we  believed  in  purga- 
tory, I  should  be  as  anxious  as  you  to  have  masses  said ;  and 
if  I  believed  it  could  now  pain  your  father  to  see  his  lilarary 
preserved  and  used  in  a  rather  different  way  from  what  he 
had  set  his  mind  on,  I  should  share  the  strictness  of  your 
views.  But  a  little  philosophy  should  teach  us  to  rid  our- 
selves of  those  air-woven  fetters  that  mortals  hang  round 
themselves,  spending  their  lives  in  misery  under  the  mere 
imagination  of  weight.  Your  mind,  which  seizes  ideas  so 
readily,  my  Romola,  is  able  to  discriminate  between  substan- 
tial good  and  these  brain-wrought  fantasies.  Ask  yourself, 
dearest,  what  possible  good  can  these  books  and  antiquities  do, 
stowed  together  under  your  father's  name  in  Florence,  more 
than  they  would  do  if  they  were  divided  or  carried  elsewhere  ? 
Nay,  is  not  the  very  dispersion  of  such  things  in  hands  that 
know  how  to  value  them,  one  means  of  extending  their  use- 
fulness ?  This  rivalry  of  Italian  cities  is  very  petty  and  illib- 
eral. The  loss  of  Constantinople  was  the  gain  of  the  whole 
civilized  world." 

Romola  was  still  too  thoroughly  under  the  painful  pressure 
of  the  new  revelation  Tito  was  making  of  himself,  for  her 
resistance  to  find  any  strong  vent.  As  that  fluent  talk  fell  on 
her  ears  there  was  a  rising  contempt  within  her,  which  only 
made  her  more  conscious  of  her  bruised,  despairing  love,  her 
love  for  the  Tito  she  had  married  and  believed  in.  Her 
nature,  possessed  with  the  energies  of  strong  emotion,  recoiled 
from  this  hopelessly  shallow  readiness  which  professed  to 
appropriate  the  widest  sympathies  and  had  no  pulse  for  the 
nearest.  She  still  spoke  like  one  who  was  restrained  from 
showing  all  she  felt.  She  had  only  drawn  away  her  arm  from 
his  knee,  and  sat  with  her  hands  clasped  before  her,  cold  and 
motionless  as  locked  waters. 

"  You  talk  of  substantial  good,  Tito  !  Are  faithfulness,  and 
love,  and  sweet  grateful  memories,  no  good  ?  Is  it  no  good 
that  we  should  keep  our  silent  promises  on  which  others  build 
because  they  believe  in  our  love  and  truth  ?  Is  it  no  good 
that  a  just  life  should  be  justly  honored  ?  Or,  is  it  good  that 
we  should  harden  our  hearts  against  all  the  wants  and  hopes  of 
those  who  have  depended  on  us  ?  What  good  can  belong  to 
men  who  have  such  souls  ?  To  talk  cleverly,  perhaps,  and 
find  soft  couches  for  themselves,  and  live  and  die  with  their 
base  selves  as  their  best  companions." 

Her  voice  had  gradually  risen  till  there  was  a  ring  of  scorn 
in  the  last  words ;  she  made  a  slight  pause,  but  he  saw  there 


262  ROMOLA. 

were  other  words  quivering  on  her  lips,  and  lie  chose  to  let 
them  come. 

"  I  know  of  no  good  for  cities  or  the  world  if  they  are  to  be 
made  up  of  such  beings.  But  I  am  not  thinking  of  other 
Italian  cities  and  the  whole  civilized  world  —  I  am  thinking 
of  my  father,  and  of  my  love  and  sorrow  for  him,  and  of  his 
just  claims  on  us.  I  would  give  up  anything  else,  Tito,  — I 
would  leave  Florence,  — what  else  did  I  live  for  but  for  him 
and  you  ?  But  I  will  not  give  up  that  duty.  What  have  I  to 
do  Math  your  arguments  ?  It  was  a  yearning  of  his  heart,  and 
therefore  it  is  a  yearning  of  mine." 

Her  voice,  from  having  been  tremulous,  had  become  full  and 
firm.  She  felt  that  she  had  been  urged  on  to  say  all  that  it 
was  needful  for  her  to  say.  She  thought,  poor  thing,  there 
was  nothing  harder  to  come  than  this  struggle  against  Tito's 
suggestions  as  against  the  meaner  part  of  herself. 

He  had  begun  to  see  clearly  that  he  could  not  persuade  her 
into  assent :  he  must  take  another  course,  and  show  her  that 
the  time  for  resistance  was  past.  That,  at  least,  would  put  an 
end  to  further  struggle  ;  and  if  the  disclosure  were  not  made 
by  himself  to-night,  to-morrow  it  must  be  made  in  another 
way.  This  necessity  nerved  his  courage  ;  and  his  experience 
of  her  affectionateness  and  unexpected  submissiveness,  ever 
since  their  marriage  until  now,  encouraged  him  to  hope  that, 
at  last,  she  would  accommodate  herself  to  what  had  been  his 
will. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  you  speak  in  that  spirit  of  blind  per- 
sistence, my  Eomola,"  he  said,  quietly,  "  because  it  obliges  me 
to  give  you  pain.  But  I  partly  foresaw  your  opposition,  and 
as  a  prompt  decision  was  necessary,  I  avoided  that  obstacle, 
and  decided  without  consulting  you.  The  very  care  of  a  hus- 
band for  his  wife's  interest  compels  him  to  that  separate 
action  sometimes  —  even  when  he  has  such  a  wife  as  you,  my 
Romola." 

She  turned  her  eyes  on  him  in  breathless  inquiry. 

"  I  mean,"  he  said,  answering  her  look,  "  that  I  have  ar- 
ranged for  the  transfer,  both  of  the  books  and  of  the  antiqui- 
ties, where  they  will  find  the  highest  use  and  value.  The 
books  have  been  bought  for  the  Duke  of  Milan,  the  marbles 
and  bronzes  and  the  rest  are  going  to  France  :  and  both  will  be 
protected  by  the  stability  of  a  great  Power,  instead  of  remain- 
ing in  a  city  which  is  exposed  to  ruin." 

Before  he  had  finished  speaking,  Romola  had  started  from 
her  seat,  and  stood  up  looking  down  at  him,  with  tightened 


A   REVELATION.  263 

hands  falling  before  her,  and,  for  the  first  time  in  her  life, 
with  a  flash  of  fierceness  in  her  scorn  and  anger. 

"  You  have  sold  them  ?  "  she  asked,  as  if  she  distrusted  her 
ears. 

"  I  have,"  said  Tito,  quailing  a  little.  The  scene  was  un- 
pleasant—  the  descending  scorn  already  scorched  him. 

"  You  are  a  treacherous  man ! "  she  said,  with  something 
grating  in  her  voice,  as  she  looked  down  at  him. 

She  was  silent  for  a  minute,  and  he  sat  still,  feeling  that 
ingenuity  was  powerless  just  now.  Suddenly  she  turned 
away,  and  said  in  an  agitated  tone,  "  It  may  be  hindered  —  I 
am  going  to  my  godfather." 

In  an  instant  Tito  started  up,  went  to  the  door,  locked  it, 
and  took  out  the  key.  It  was  time  for  all  the  masculine  pre- 
dominance that  was  latent  in  him  to  show  itself.  But  he  was 
not  angry  ;  he  only  felt  that  the  moment  was  eminently  un- 
pleasant, and  that  when  this  scene  was  at  an  end  he  should  be 
glad  to  keep  away  from  Romola  for  a  little  while.  But  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  first  that  she  should  be  reduced  to  pas- 
siveness. 

"  Try  to  calm  yourself  a  little,  Romola,"  he  said,  leaning  in 
the  easiest  attitude  possible  against  a  pedestal  under  the  bust 
of  a  grim  old  Roman.  Not  that  he  was  inwardly  easy :  his 
heart  palpitated  with  a  moral  dread,  against  which  no  chain- 
armor  could  be  found.  He  had  locked  in  his  wife's  anger  and 
scorn,  but  he  had  been  obliged  to  lock  himself  in  with  it ;  and 
his  blood  did  not  rise  with  contest  —  his  olive  cheek  was  per- 
ceptibly paled. 

Romola  had  paused  and  turned  her  eyes  on  him  as  she  saw 
him  take  his  stand  and  lodge  the  key  in  his  scarsella.  Her 
eyes  were  flashing,  and  her  whole  frame  seemed  to  be  pos- 
sessed by  impetuous  force  that  wanted  to  leap  out  in  some  deed. 
All  the  crushing  pain  of  disappointment  in  her  husband, 
which  had  made  the  strongest  part  of  her  consciousness  a  few 
minutes  before,  was  annihilated  by  the  vehemence  of  her  in- 
dignation. She  could  not  care  in  this  moment  that  the  man 
she  was  despising  as  he  leaned  there  in  his  loathsome  beauty 
—  she  could  not  care  that  he  was  her  husband ;  she  could  only 
feel  that  she  despised  him.  The  pride  and  fierceness  of  the 
old  Bardo  blood  had  been  thoroughly  awaked  in  her  for  the 
first  time. 

"  Try  at  least  to  understand  the  fact,"  said  Tito,  "  and  do 
not  seek  to  take  futile  steps  which  may  be  fatal.  It  is  of  no 
use  for  you  to  go  to  your  godfather.     Messer  Bernardo  cannot 


264  ROMOLA. 

reverse  what  I  have  done.  Only  sit  down.  You  would  hardly 
wish,  if  you  were  quite  yourself,  to  make  known  to  any  third 
person  what  passes  between  us  in  private." 

Tito  knew  that  he  had  touched  the  right  fibre  there.  But 
she  did  not  sit  down ;  she  was  too  unconscious  of  her  body 
voluntarily  to  change  her  attitude. 

"  Why  can  it  not  be  reversed  ? "  she  said  after  a  pause. 
"  Nothing  is  moved  yet." 

"  Simply  because  the  sale  has  been  concluded  by  written 
agreement ;  the  purchasers  have  left  Florence  and  I  hold  the 
bonds  for  the  purchase-money." 

"  If  my  father  had  suspected  you  of  being  a  faithless  man," 
said  Romola,  in  a  tone  of  bitter  scorn,  which  insisted  on  dart- 
ing out  before  she  could  say  anything  else,  "he  would  have 
placed  the  library  safely  out  of  your  power.  But  death  over- 
took him  too  soon,  and  when  you  were  sure  his  ear  was  deaf, 
and  his  hand  stiff,  you  robbed  him."  She  paused  an  instant, 
and  then  said  with  gathered  passion,  "  Have  you  robbed  some- 
body else  who  is  not  dead  ?  Is  that  the  reason  you  wear 
armor  ?  " 

Romola  had  been  driven  to  utter  the  words  as  men  are 
driven  to  use  the  lash  of  the  horsewhip.  At  first,  Tito  felt 
horribly  cowed  ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  disgrace  he  had 
been  dreading  would  be  worse  than  he  had  imagined  it.  But 
soon  there  was  a  re-action  :  such  power  of  dislike  and  resist- 
ance as  there  was  within  him  was  beginning  to  rise  against  a 
wife  whose  voice  seemed  like  the  herald  of  a  retributive  fate. 
Her,  at  least,  his  quick  mind  told  him  that  he  might  master. 

"  It  is  useless,"  he  said,  coolly,  "  to  answer  the  words  of 
madness,  Romola.  Your  peculiar  feeling  about  your  father 
has  made  you  mad  at  this  moment.  Any  rational  person 
looking  at  the  case  from  a  due  distance  will  see  that  I  have 
taken  the  wisest  course.  Apart  from  the  influence  of  your 
exaggerated  feelings  on  him,  I  am  convinced  that  Messer 
Bernardo  would  be  of  that  opinion." 

"  He  would  not ! "  said  Romola,  "  He  lives  in  the  hope  of  see- 
ing my  father's  wish  exactly  fulfilled.  We  spoke  of  it  together 
only  yesterday.  He  will  help  me  yet.  Who  are  these  men 
to  whom  you  have  sold  my  father's  property  ?  " 

"  There  is  no  reason  why  you  should  not  be  told,  except 
that  it  signifies  little.  The  Count  di  San  Severino  and  the 
Seneschal  de  Beaucaire  are  now  on  their  way  with  the  king  to 
Siena." 

"  They  may  be  overtaken  and  persuaded  to  give  up  theiv 


A   REVELATION.  265 

purchase,"  said  Romola,  eagerly,  her  anger  beginning  to  be 
surmounted  by  anxious  thouglit. 

"  No,  they  may  not,"  said  Tito,  with  cool  decision. 

u  Why  ?  " 

"  Because  I  do  not  choose  that  they  should." 

"  But  if  you  were  paid  the  money  ?  —  we  will  pay  you  the 
money,"  said  Romola. 

No  words  could  have  disclosed  more  fully  her  sense  of 
alienation  from  Tito  ;  but  they  were  spoken  with  less  of  bit- 
terness than  of  anxious  pleading.  And  he  felt  stronger,  for 
he  saw  that  the  first  impulse  of  fury  was  past. 

"  No,  my  Romola.  Understand  that  such  thoughts  as  these 
are  impracticable.  You  would  not,  in  a  reasonable  moment, 
ask  your  godfather  to  bury  three  thousand  florins  in  addition 
to  what  he  has  already  paid  on  the  library.  I  think  your 
pride  and  delicacy  would  shrink  from  that." 

She  began  to  tremble  and  turn  cold  again  with  discourage- 
ment, and  sank  down  on  the  carved  chest  near  which  she  was 
standing.  He  went  on  in  a  clear  voice,  under  which  she 
shuddered,  as  if  it  had  been  a  narrow  cold  stream  coursing 
over  a  hot  cheek. 

"  Moreover,  it  is  not  my  will  that  Messer  Bernardo  should 
advance  the  money,  even  if  the  project  were  not  an  utterly 
wild  one.  And  I  beg  you  to  consider,  before  you  take  any 
step  or  utter  any  word  on  the  subject,  what  will  be  the  conse- 
quences of  your  placing  yourself  in  opposition  to  me,  and 
trying  to  exhibit  your  husband  in  the  odious  light  which  your 
own  distempered  feelings  cast  over  him.  What  object  will 
you  serve  by  injuring  me  with  Messer  Bernardo  ?  The  event 
is  irrevocable,  the  library  is  sold,  and  you  are  my  wife." 

Every  word  was  spoken  for  the  sake  of  a  calculated  effect, 
for  his  intellect  was  urged  into  the  utmost  activity  by  the 
danger  of  the  crisis.  He  knew  that  Romola's  mind  would 
take  in  rapidly  enough  all  the  wide  meaning  of  his  speecii. 
He  waited  and  watched  her  in  silence. 

She  had  turned  her  eyes  from  him,  and  was  looking  on  the 
ground,  and  in  that  way  she  sat  for  several  minutes.  When 
she  spoke,  her  voice  was  quite  altered,  —  it  was  quiet  and 
cold. 

"  I  have  one  thing  to  ask." 

"Ask  anything  that  I  can  do  without  injuring  us  both, 
Romola." 

"  That  you  will  give  me  that  portion  of  the  money  which 
belongs  to  my  godfather,  and  let  me  pay  him." 


266  ROMOLA. 

"I  must  have  some  assurance  from  you,  first,  of  the  atti- 
tude you  intend  to  take  towards  me." 

''  Do  you  believe  in  assurances,  Tito  ?  "  she  said,  with  a 
tinge  of  returning  bitterness. 

"From  you,  I  do." 

"  I  will  do  you  no  harm.  I  shall  disclose  nothing.  I  will 
say  nothing  to  pain  him  or  you.  You  say  truly,  the  event  is 
irrevocable." 

"Then  I  will  do  what  you  desire  to-morrow  morning." 

"  To-night,  if  possible,"  said  Romola,  "  that  we  may  not 
speak  of  it  again." 

"  It  is  possible,"  he  said,  moving  towards  the  lamp,  while 
she  sat  still,  looking  away  from  him  with  absent  eyes. 

Presently  he  came  and  bent  down  over  her,  to  put  a  piece 
of  paper  into  her  hand.  "  You  will  receive  something  in  re- 
turn, you  are  aware,  my  Romola  ?  "  he  said,  gently,  not  mind- 
ing so  much  what  had  passed,  now  he  was  secure  ;  and  feeling 
able  to  try  and  propitiate  her. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  taking  the  paper,  without  looking  at  him. 
"  I  understand." 

"  And  you  will  forgive  me,  my  Romola,  when  you  have  had 
time  to  reflect."  He  just  touched  her  brow  with  his  lips,  but 
she  took  no  notice,  and  seemed  really  unconscious  of  the  act. 

She  was  aware  that  he  unlocked  the  door  and  went  out. 
She  moved  her  head  and  listened.  The  great  door  of  the 
court  opened  and  shut  again.  She  started  up  as  if  some  sud- 
den freedom  had  come,  and  going  to  her  father's  chair  where 
his  picture  was  propped,  fell  on  her  knees  before  it,  and  burst 
into  sobs. 


CHAPTER   XXXIII. 

BALDASSARRE    MAKES    AN    ACQUAINTANCE. 

When  Baldassarre  was  wandering  about  Florence  in  search 
of  a  spare  outhouse  where  he  might  have  the  cheapest  of 
sheltered  beds,  his  steps  had  been  attracted  towards  that  sole 
portion  of  ground  within  the  walls  of  the  city  which  is  not 
perfectly  level,  and  where  the  spectator,  lifted  above  the  roofs 
of  the  houses,  can  see  beyond  the  city  to  the  protecting  hills 
and  far-stretching  valley,  otherwise  shut  out  from  his  view 
except  along  the  welcome  opening  made  by  the  course  of  the 


BALDASSARRE  MAKES  AN  ACQUAINTANCE.     267 

Arno.  Part  of  that  ground  has  been  already  seen  by  us  as 
the  hill  of  Bogoli,  at  that  time  a  great  stone-quarry ;  but  the 
side  towards  which  Baldassarre  directed  his  steps  was  the  one 
that  sloped  down  behind  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  and  was  most 
commonly  called  the  hill  of  San  Giorgio.  Bratti  had  told  him 
that  Tito's  dwelling  was  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi ;  and,  after 
surveying  that  street,  he  turned  up  the  slope  of  the  hill  which 
he  had  observed  as  he  was  crossing  the  bridge.  If  he  could 
find  a  sheltering  outhouse  on  that  hill,  he  would  be  glad  :  he 
had  now  for  some  years  been  accustomed  to  live  with  a  broad 
sky  about  him ;  and,  moreover,  the  narrow  passes  of  the 
streets,  with  their  strip  of  sky  above,  and  the  unknown 
labyrinth  around  them,  seemed  to  intensify  his  sense  of 
loneliness  and  feeble  memory. 

The  hill  was  sparsely  inhabited,  and  covered  chiefly  by 
gardens ;  but  in  one  spot  was  a  piece  of  rough  ground  jagged 
with  great  stones,  which  had  never  been  cultivated  since  a 
landslip  had  ruined  some  houses  there  towards  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  Just  above  the  edge  of  this  broken 
ground  stood  a  queer  little  square  building,  looking  like  a 
truncated  tower  roofed  in  with  fluted  tiles,  and  close  by  was  a 
small  outhouse,  apparently  built  up  against  a  piece  of  ruined 
stone  wall.  Under  a  large  half-dead  mulberry-tree  that  was 
now  sending  its  last  fluttering  leaves  in  at  the  open  doorways, 
a  shrivelled,  hardy  old  woman  was  untying  a  goat  with  two 
kids,  and  Baldassarre  could  see  that  part  of  the  outbuilding 
was  occupied  by  live  stock ;  but  the  door  of  the  other  part 
was  open,  and  it  was  empty  of  everything  but  some  tools  and 
straw.  It  was  just  the  sort  of  place  he  wanted.  He  spoke 
to  the  old  woman  ;  but  it  was  not  till  he  got  close  to  her  and 
shouted  in  her  ear,  that  he  succeeded  in  making  her  under- 
stand his  want  of  a  lodging,  and  his  readiness  to  pay  for  it. 
At  first  he  could  get  no  answer  beyond  shakes  of  the  head 
and  the  words,  "  No  —  no  lodging,"  uttered  in  the  muffled 
tone  of  the  deaf.  But,  by  dint  of  persistence,  he  made  clear 
to  her  that  he  was  a  poor  stranger  from  a  long  way  over  seas, 
and  could  not  afford  to  go  to  hostelries  ;  that  he  only  wanted 
to  lie  on  the  straw  in  the  outhouse,  and  would  pay  her  a 
quattrino  or  two  a  week  for  that  shelter.  She  still  looked  at 
him  dubiously,  shaking  her  head  and  talking  low  to  herself ; 
but  presently,  as  if  a  new  thought  occurred  to  her,  she  fetched 
a  hatchet  from  the  house,  and,  showing  him  a  chump  that  lay 
half  covered  with  litter  in  a  corner,  asked  him  if  he  would 
chop  that  up  for  her:  if  he  would,  he  might  lie  in  the  out- 


268  ROMOLA. 

house  for  one  night.  He  agreed,  and  Monna  Lisa  stood  with 
her  arms  akimbo  to  watch  him,  with  a  smile  of  gratified 
cunning,  saying  low  to  herself,  — 

"  It's  lain  there  ever  since  my  old  man  died.  What  then  ? 
I  might  as  well  have  put  a  stone  on  the  fire.  He  chops  very 
well,  though  he  does  speak  with  a  foreign  tongue,  and  looks 
odd.  I  couldn't  have  got  it  done  cheaper.  And  if  he  only 
wants  a  bit  of  straw  to  lie  on,  I  might  make  him  do  an  errand 
or  two  up  and  down  the  hill.  Who  need  know  ?  And  sin 
that's  hiddeu's  half  forgiven.^  He's  a  stranger :  he'll  take  no 
notice  of  her.     And  I'll  tell  her  to  keep  her  tongue  still." 

The  antecedent  to  these  feminine  pronouns  had  a  pair  of 
blue  eyes,  which  at  that  moment  were  applied  to  a  large  round 
hole  in  the  shutter  of  the  upper  window.  The  shutter  was 
closed,  not  for  any  penal  reasons,  but  because  only  the  opposite 
window  had  the  luxury  of  glass  in  it :  the  Aveather  was  not 
warm,  and  a  round  hole  four  inches  in  diameter  served  all  the 
purposes  of  observation.  The  hole  was,  unfortunately,  a  little 
too  high,  and  obliged  the  small  observer  to  stand  on  a  low 
stool  of  a  rickety  character ;  but  Tessa  would  have  stood  a 
long  while  in  a  much  more  inconvenient  position  for  the  sake 
of  seeing  a  little  variety  in  her  life.  She  had  been  drawn  to 
the  opening  at  the  first  loud  tones  of  the  strange  voice  speak- 
ing to  Monna  Lisa;  and  darting  gently  across  her  room  every 
now  and  then  to  peep  at  something,  she  continued  to  stand 
there  until  the  wood  had  been  chopped,  and  she  saw 
Baklassarre  enter  the  outhouse,  as  the  dusk  was  gathering, 
and  seat  himself  on  the  straw. 

A  great  temptation  had  laid  hold  of  Tessa's  mind ;  she 
would  go  and  take  that  old  man  part  of  her  supper,  and  talk 
to  him  a  little.  He  was  not  deaf  like  Monna  Lisa,  and  besides 
she  could  say  a  great  many  things  to  him  that  it  was  no  use 
to  shout  at  Monna  Lisa,  who  knew  them  already.  And  he  was 
a  stranger  —  strangers  came  from  a  long  way  off  and  went 
away  again,  and  lived  nowhere  in  particular.  It  was  naughty, 
she  knew,  for  obedience  made  the  largest  part  in  Tessa's  idea 
of  duty ;  but  it  would  be  something  to  confess  to  the  Padre 
next  Pasqua,  and  there  was  nothing  else  to  confess  except 
going  to  sleep  sometimes  over  her  beads,  and  being  a  little 
cross  with  Monna  Lisa  because  she  was  so  deaf ;  for  she  had  as 
much  idleness  as  she  liked  now,  and  was  never  frightened  into 
telling  white  lies.  She  turned  away  from  her  shutter  with 
rather  an  excited  expression  in  her  childish  face,  which  was 

1  "  Peccato  celato  b  mezzo  perdonato." 


BALDASSARRE  MAKES  AN  ACQUAINTANCE.      269 

as  pretty  and  pouting  as  ever.  Her  garb  was  still  that  of  a 
simple  contadina,  biit  of  a  contadina  prepared  for  a  festa  :  her 
gown  of  dark-green  serge,  with  its  red  girdle,  was  very  clean 
and  neat ;  she  had  the  string  of  red  glass  beads  round  her 
neck  ;  and  her  brown  hair,  rough  from  curliness,  was  duly 
knotted  up,  and  fastened  with  the  silver  pin.  She  had  but 
one  new  ornament,  and  she  was  very  proud  of  it,  for  it  was  a 
hne  gold  ring. 

Tessa  sat  on  the  low  stool,  nursing  her  knees,  for  a  minute 
or  two,  with  her  little  soul  poised  in  fluttering  excitement  on 
the  edge  of  this  pleasant  transgression.  It  was  quite  irresisti- 
ble. She  had  been  commanded  to  make  no  acquaintances,  and 
Avarned  that  if  she  did,  all  her  new  happy  lot  would  vanish  away, 
and  be  like  a  hidden  treasure  that  turned  to  lead  as  soon  as  it 
was  brought  to  the  daylight ;  and  she  had  been  so  obedient 
that  when  she  had  to  go  to  church  she  had  kept  her  face 
shaded  by  her  hood  and  had  pursed  up  her  lips  quite  tightly. 
It  was  true  her  obedience  had  been  a  little  helped  by  her  own 
dread  lest  the  alarming  stepfather  Nofri  should  turn  up  even 
in  this  quarter,  so  far  from  the  Por'  del  Prato,  and  beat  her  at 
least,  if  he  did  not  drag  her  back  to  work  for  him.  But  this 
old  man  was  not  an  acquaintance  ;  he  was  a  poor  stranger 
going  to  sleep  in  the  outhouse,  and  he  probably  knew  nothing 
of  stepfather  Nofri;  and,  besides,  if  she  took  him  some 
supper,  he  would  like  her,  and  not  want  to  tell  anything  about 
her.  Monna  Lisa  would  say  she  must  not  go  and  talk  to  him, 
therefore  Monna  Lisa  must  not  be  consulted.  It  did  not 
signify  what  she  found  out  after  it  had  been  done. 

Supper  was  being  prepared,  she  knew  —  a  mountain  of 
macaroni  flavored  with  cheese,  fragrant  enough  to  tame  any 
stranger.  So  she  tripped  downstairs  with  a  mind  full  of  deep 
designs,  and  first  asking  with  an  innocent  look  what  that 
noise  of  talking  had  been,  without  waiting  for  an  answer,  knit 
her  brow  with  a  peremptory  air,  something  like  a  kitten  trying 
to  be  formidable,  and  sent  the  old  woman  upstairs ;  saying, 
she  chose  to  eat  her  supper  down  below.  In  three  minutes 
Tessa  with  her  lantern  in  one  hand  and  a  wooden  bowl  of 
macaroni  in  the  other,  was  kicking  gently  at  the  door  of  the 
outhouse;  and  Baldassarre,  roused  from  sad  reverie,  doubted 
in  the  first  moment  whether  he  were  awake  as  he  opened  the 
door  and  saw  this  surprising  little  handmaid,  with  delight  in 
her  wide  eyes,  breaking  in  on  his  dismal  loneliness. 

"I've  brought  you  some  supper,"  she  said,  lifting  her 
mouth   towards   his   ear   and   shouting,   as   if   he   had    been 


270  ROMOLA. 

deaf  like  Monna  Lisa.  "  Sit  down  and  eat  it,  while  I  stay 
with  you." 

Surprise  and  distrust  surmounted  every  other  feeling  in 
Baldassarre,  but  though  he  had  no  smile  or  word  of  gratitude 
ready,  there  could  not  be  any  impulse  to  push  away  this 
visitant,  and  he  sank  down  passively  on  his  straw  again,  while 
Tessa  placed  herself  close  to  him,  put  the  wooden  bowl  on  his 
lap,  and  set  down  the  lantern  in  front  of  them,  crossing  her 
hands  before  her,  and  nodding  at  the  bowl  with  a  significant 
smile,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Yes,  you  may  really  eat  it."  For, 
in  the  excitement  of  carrying  out  her  deed,  she  had  forgotten 
her  previous  thought  that  the  stranger  would  not  be  deaf,  and 
had  fallen  into  her  habitual  alternative  of  dumb  show  and 
shouting. 

The  invitation  was  not  a  disagreeable  one,  for  he  had  been 
gnawing  a  remnant  of  dry  bread,  which  had  left  plenty  of 
appetite  for  anything  warm  and  relishing.  Tessa  watched 
the  disappearance  of  two  or  three  mouthfuls  without  speak- 
ing, for  she  had  thought  his  eyes  rather  fierce  at  first ;  but 
now  she  ventured  to  put  her  mouth  to  his  ear  again,  and 

cry*  — 

"  I  like  my  supper,  don't  you  ?  " 

It  was  not  a  smile,  but  rather  the  milder  look  of  a  dog 
touched  by  kindness,  but  unable  to  smile,  that  Baldassarre 
turned  on  this  round,  blue-eyed  thing  that  was  caring  about 
him. 

"  Yes,"  he  said ;  "  but  I  can  hear  well  —  I'm  not  deaf." 

"  It  is  true ;  I  forgot,"  said  Tessa,  lifting  her  hands  and 
clasping  them.  "  But  Monna  Lisa  is  deaf,  and  I  live  with 
her.  She's  a  kind  old  woman,  and  I'm  not  frightened  at  her. 
And  we  live  very  well :  we  have  plenty  of  nice  things.  I  can 
have  nuts  if  I  like.  And  I'm  not  obliged  to  Avork  now.  I 
used  to  have  to  Avork,  and  I  didn't  like  it ;  but  I  liked  feeding 
the  mules,  and  I  should  like  to  see  poor  Giannetta,  the  little 
mule,  again.  We've  only  got  a  goat  and  two  kids,  and  I  used 
to  talk  to  the  goat  a  good  deal,  because  there  was  nobody  else 
but  Monna  Lisa.  But  now  I've  got  something  else  —  can  you 
guess  what  it  is  ?  " 

She  drew  her  head  back,  and  looked  with  a  challenging 
smile  at  Baldassarre,  as  if  she  had  proposed  a  difficult  riddle 
to  him. 

"  No,"  said  he,  putting  aside  his  bowl,  and  looking  at  her 
dreamily.  It  seemed  as  if  this  young  prattling  thing  were 
some  memory  come  back  out  of  his  own  youth. 


BALDASSAERE  MAKES  AN  ACQUAINTANCE.       271 

"  You  like  me  to  talk  to  you,  don't  you  ? "  said  Tessa, 
"  but  you  must  not  tell  anybody.  Shall  I  fetch  you  a  bit  of 
cold  sausage  ? " 

He  shook  his  head,  but  he  looked  so  mild  now  that  Tessa 
felt  quite  at  her  ease. 

"  Well,  then,  I've  got  a  little  baby.  Such  a  pretty  bambi- 
netto,  with  little  fingers  and  nails  !  Not  old  yet ;  it  was  born 
at  the  Nativitk,  Monna  Lisa  says.  I  was  married  one 
Nativitk,  a  long,  long  while  ago,  and  nobody  knew.  0  Santa 
Madonna !     I  didn't  mean  to  tell  you  that !  " 

Tessa  set  up  her  shoulders  and  bit  her  lip,  looking  at 
Baldassarre  as  if  this  betrayal  of  secrets  must  have  an  excit- 
ing effect  on  him  too.  But  he  seemed  not  to  care  much  ;  and 
perhaps  that  was  in  the  nature  of  strangers. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  carrying  on  her  thought  aloud,  "  you  are 
a  stranger;  you  don't  live  anywhere  or  know  anybody,  do 
you  ?  " 

"No,"  said  Baldassarre,  also  thinking  aloud,  rather  than 
consciously  answering,  "  I  only  know  one  man." 

"  His  name  is  not  Nofri,    is   it  ? "  said  Tessa   anxiously. 

"  No,"  said  Baldassarre,  noticing  her  look  of  fear.  "  Is 
that  your  husband's  name  ?  " 

That  mistaken  supposition  was  very  amusing  to  Tessa. 
She  laughed  and  clapped  her  hands  as  she  said,  — 

"  No,  indeed  !  But  I  must  not  tell  you  anything  about  my 
husband.  You  would  never  think  what  he  is  —  not  at  all 
like  Nofri !  " 

She  laughed  again  at  the  delightful  incongruity  between 
the  name  of  Nofri  —  which  was  not  separable  from  the  idea 
of  the  cross-grained  stepfather  —  and  the  idea  of  her  hus- 
band. 

"  But  I  don't  see  him  very  often,"  she  went  on,  more 
gravely.  "  And  sometimes  I  pray  to  the  Holy  Madonna  to 
send  him  oftener,  and  once  she  did.  But  I  must  go  back  to 
my  bimbo  now.  I'll  bring  it  to  show  you  to-morrow.  You 
would  like  to  see  it.  Sometimes  it  cries  and  makes  a  face, 
but  only  when  it's  hungry,  Monna  Lisa  says.  You  wouldn't 
think  it,  but  Monna  Lisa  had  babies  once,  and  they  are  all 
dead  old  men.  My  husband  says  she  will  never  die  now, 
because  she's  so  well  dried.  I'm  glad  of  that,  for  I'm  fond  of 
her.     You  would  like  to  stay  here  to-morrow,  shouldn't  you  ?  " 

"  I  should  like  to  have  this  place  to  come  and  rest  in,  that's 
all,"  said  Baldassarre.  "  I  would  pay  for  it,  and  harm  no- 
body." 


272  ROMOLA. 

"  No,  indeed ;  I  think  you  are  not  a  bad  old  man.  But 
you  look  sorry  about  something.  Tell  me,  is  there  anything 
you  shall  cry  about  when  I  leave  you  by  yourself  ?  I  used  to 
cry  once." 

"  jSTo,  child ;  I  think  I  shall  cry  no  more." 

"  That's  right ;  and  I'll  bring  you  some  breakfast,  and  show 
you  the  bimbo.     Good-night." 

Tessa  took  up  her  bowl  and  lantern,  and  closed  the  door 
behind  her.  The  pretty  loving  apparition  had  been  no  more 
to  Baldassarre  than  a  faint  rainbow  on  the  blackness  to  the 
man  who  is  wrestling  in  deep  waters.  He  hardly  thought  of 
her  again  till  his  dreamy  waking  passed  into  the  more  vivid 
images  of  disturbed  sleep. 

But  Tessa  thought  much  of  him.  She  had  no  sooner 
entered  the  house  than  she  told  Monna  Lisa  what  she  had 
done,  and  insisted  that  the  stranger  should  be  allowed  to 
come  and  rest  in  the  outhouse  when  he  liked.  The  old 
woman,  who  had  had  her  notions  of  making  him  a  useful 
tenant,  made  a  great  show  of  reluctance,  shook  her  head,  and 
urged  that  Messer  Naldo  would  be  angry  if  she  let  any  one 
come  about  the  house.  Tessa  did  not  believe  that.  Naldo 
had  said  nothing  against  strangers  who  lived  nowhere  ;  and 
this  old  man  knew  nobody  except  one  person,  who  was  not 
Nofri. 

"  Well,"  conceded  Monna  Lisa,  at  last,  "  if  I  let  him  stay 
for  a  while  and  carry  things  up  the  hill  for  me,  thou  must 
keep  thy  counsel  and  tell  nobody." 

"  No,"  said  Tessa,  "  I'll  only  tell  the  bimbo." 

"  And  then,"  Monna  Lisa  went  on,  in  her  thick  undertone, 
"  God  may  love  us  well  enough  not  to  let  Messer  Naldo  find 
out  anything  about  it.  For  he  never  comes  here  but  at  dark  ; 
and  as  he  was  here  two  days  ago,  it's  likely  he'll  never  come 
at  all  till  the  old  man's  gone  away  again." 

"  Oh,  me  !  Monna,"  said  Tessa,  clasping  her  hands,  "I  wish 
Naldo  had  not  to  go  such  a  long,  long  way  sometimes  before 
he  comes  back  again." 

"  Ah,  child !  the  world's  big,  they  say.  There  are  places 
behind  the  mountains,  and  if  people  go  night  and  day,  night 
and  day,  they  get  to  Eome,  and  see  the  Holy  Father." 

Tessa  looked  submissive  in  the  presence  of  this  mystery, 
and  began  to  rock  her  baby,  and  sing  syllables  of  vague 
loving  meaning,  in  tones  that  imitated  a  triple  chime. 

The  next  morning  she  was  unusually  industrious  in  the 
prospect  of  more  dialogue,  and  of  the  pleasure  she  should  give 


BALDASSARRE  MAKES  AN  ACQUAINTANCE.     273 

the  poor  old  stranger  by  showing  him  her  baby.  But  before 
she  could  get  ready  to  take  Baldassarre  his  breakfast,  she 
found  that  Monna  Lisa  had  been  employing  him  as  a  drawer 
of  water.  She  deferred  her  paternosters,  and  hurried  down  to 
insist  that  Baldassarre  should  sit  on  his  straw,  so  that  she 
might  come  and  sit  by  him  again  while  he  ate  his  breakfast. 
That  attitude  made  the  new  companionship  all  the  more 
delightful  to  Tessa,  for  she  had  been  used  to  sitting  on  straw 
in  old  days  along  with  her  goats  and  mules. 

"  I  will  not  let  Monna  Lisa  give  you  too  much  work  to  do," 
she  said,  bringing  him  some  steaming  broth  and  soft  bread. 
"  I  don't  like  much  work,  and  I  dare  say  you  don't.  I  like 
sitting  in  the  sunshine  and  feeding  things.  Monna  Lisa  says, 
work  is  good,  but  she  does  it  all  herself,  so  I  don't  mind. 
She's  not  a  cross  old  woman ;  you  needn't  be  afraid  of  her 
being  cross.  And  now,  you  eat  that,  and  I'll  go  and  fetch  my 
baby  and  show  it  you." 

Presently  she  came  back  with  the  small  mummy-case  in 
her  arms.  The  mummy  looked  very  lively,  having  unusually 
large  dark  eyes,  though  no  more  than  the  usual  indication  of 
a  future  nose. 

"  This  is  my  baby,"  said  Tessa,  seating  herself  close  to 
Baldassarre.  "  You  didn't  think  it  was  so  pretty,  did  you  ? 
It  is  like  the  little  Gesu,  and  I  should  think  the  Santa 
Madonna  would  be  kinder  to  me  now,  is  it  not  true  ?  But  I 
have  not  much  to  ask  for,  because  I  have  everything  now  — 
only  that  I  should  see  my  husband  oftener.  You  may  hold 
the  bambino  a  little  if  you  like,  but  I  think  you  must  not  kiss 
him,  because  you  might  hurt  him." 

She  spoke  this  prohibition  in  atone  of  soothing  excuse,  and 
Baldassarre  could  not  refuse  to  hold  the  small  package. 
"  Poor  thing  !  poor  thing  !  "  he  said,  in  a  deep  voice  which 
had  something  strangely  threatening  in  its  apparent  pity.  It 
did  not  seem  to  him  as  if  this  guileless,  loving  little  woman 
could  reconcile  him  to  the  world  at  all,  but  rather  that  she 
was  with  him  against  the  world,  that  she  was  a  creature  who 
would  need  to  be  avenged. 

"  Oh,  don't  you  be  sorry  for  me,"  she  said  ;  "  for  though  I 
don't  see  him  often,  he  is  more  beautiful  and  good  than  any- 
body else  in  the  world.  I  say  prayers  to  him  when  he's  away. 
You  couldn't  think  what  he  is  ! " 

She  looked  at  Baldassarre  with  a  wide  glance  of  mysterious 
meaning,  taking  the  baby  from  him  again,  and  almost  wish- 
ing he  would  question  her  as  if  he  wanted  very  much  to 
know  more. 


274  ROMOLA. 

"  Yes,  I  could,"  said  Baldassarre,  rather  bitterly. 

"No,  I'm  sure  you  uever  could,"  said  Tessa,  earnestly. 
"  You  thought  he  might  be  Nofri,"  she  added,  with  a  triumph- 
ant air  of  conclusiveness.  "  But  never  mind ;  you  couldn't 
know.     What  is  your  name  ?  " 

He  rubbed  his  hand  over  his  knitted  brow,  then  looked  at 
her  blankly  and  said,  "  Ah,  child,  what  is  it  ?  " 

It  was  not  that  he  did  not  often  remember  his  name  well 
enough  ;  and  if  he  had  had  presence  of  mind  now  to  remember 
it,  he  would  have  chosen  not  to  tell  it.  But  a  sudden  question 
appealing  to  his  memory,  had  a  paralyzing  effect,  and  in  that 
moment  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  but  helplessness. 

Ignorant  as  Tessa  was,  the  pity  stirred  in  her  by  his  blank 
look  taught  her  to  say,  — 

"  Never  mind :  you  are  a  stranger,  it  is  no  matter  about 
your  having  a  name.  Good-by  now,  because  I  want  my  break- 
fast. You  will  come  here  and  rest  when  you  like ;  Monna 
Lisa  says  you  may.  And  don't  you  be  unhappy,  for  we'll  be 
good  to  you." 

"  Poor  thing  !  "  said  Baldassarre  again. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

NO    PLACE    FOR    REPENTANCE. 

Messer  Naldo  came  again  sooner  than  was  expected :  he 
came  on  the  evening  of  the  twenty-eighth  of  November,  only 
eleven  days  after  his  previous  visit,  proving  that  he  had  not 
gone  far  beyond  the  mountains  ;  and  a  scene  which  we  have 
witnessed  as  it  took  place  that  evening  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi 
may  help  to  explain  the  impulse  which  turned  his  steps  to- 
wards the  hill  of  San  Giorgio. 

When  Tito  had  first  found  this  home  for  Tessa,  on  his  re- 
turn from  Rome,  more  than  a  year  and  a  half  ago,  he  had 
acted,  he  persuaded  himself,  simply  under  the  constraint  im- 
posed on  him  by  his  own  kindliness  after  the  unlucky  incident 
which  had  made  foolish  little  Tessa  imagine  him  to  be  her  hus- 
band. It  was  true  that  the  kindness  was  manifested  towards 
a  pretty  trusting  thing  whom  it  was  impossible  to  be  near  with- 
out feeling  inclined  to  caress  and  pet  her  ;  but  it  was  not  less 
true  that  Tito  had  movements  of  kindness  towards  her  apart 


NO  PLACE  FOR  REPENTANCE  276 

from  any  contemplated  gain  to  himself.  Otherwise,  charming 
as  her  prettiness  and  prattle  were  in  a  lazy  moment,  he  might 
have  preferred  to  be  free  from  her ;  for  he  was  not  in  love  with 
Tessa  —  he  was  in  love  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  with  an 
entirely  different  woman,  whom  he  was  not  simply  inclined  to 
shower  caresses  on,  but  whose  presence  possessed  him  so  that 
the  simple  sweep  of  her  long  tresses  across  his  cheek  seemed 
to  vibrate  through  the  hours.  All  the  young  ideal  passion  he 
had  in  him  had  been  stirred  by  Romola,  and  his  fibre  was  too 
fine,  his  intellect  too  bright,  for  him  to  be  tempted  into  the 
habits  of  a  gross  pleasure-seeker.  But  he  had  spun  a  web 
about  himself  and  Tessa,  which  he  felt  incapable  of  break- 
ing :  in  the  first  moments  after  the  mimic  marriage  he  had 
been  prompted  to  leave  her  under  an  illusion  by  a  distinct 
calculation  of  his  own  possible  need,  but  since  that  critical 
moment  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  web  had  gone  on  spinning 
itself  in  spite  of  him  like  a  growth  over  which  he  had  no 
power.  The  elements  of  kindness  and  self-indulgence  are 
hard  to  distinguish  in  a  soft  nature  like  Tito's  ;  and  the  annoy- 
ance he  had  felt  under  Tessa's  pursuit  of  him  on  the  day  of 
his  betrothal,  the  thorough  intention  of  revealing  the  truth  to 
her  with  which  he  set  out  to  fulfil  his  promise  of  seeing  her 
again,  were  a  sufficiently  strong  argument  to  him  that  in  ulti- 
mately leaving  Tessa  under  her  illusion  and  providing  a  home 
for  her,  he  had  been  overcome  by  his  own  kindness.  And  in 
these  days  of  his  first  devotion  to  Romola  he  needed  a  self- 
justifying  argument.  He  had  learned  to  be  glad  that  she  was 
deceived  about  some  things.  But  every  strong  feeling  makes 
to  itself  a  conscience  of  its  own  —  has  its  own  piety  ;  just  as 
much  as  the  feeling  of  the  son  towards  the  mother,  which  will 
sometimes  survive  amid  the  worst  fumes  of  depravation  ;  and 
Tito  could  not  yet  be  easy  in  committing  a  secret  offence 
against  his  wedded  love. 

But  he  was  all  the  more  careful  in  taking  precautions  to 
preserve  the  secrecy  of  the  offence.  Monna  Lisa,  who,  like 
many  of  her  class,  never  left  her  habitation  except  to  go  to 
one  or  two  particular  shops,  and  to  confession  once  a  year, 
knew  nothing  of  his  real  name  and  whereabout :  she  only  knew 
that  he  paid  her  so  as  to  make  her  very  comfortable,  and 
minded  little  about  the  rest,  save  that  she  got  fond  of  Tessa, 
and  found  pleasure  in  the  cares  for  which  she  was  paid.  There 
was  some  mystery  behind,  clearly,  since  Tessa  was  a  contadina, 
and  Messer  Naldo  was  a  signor ;  but,  for  aught  Monna  Lisa 
knew,  he  might  be  a  real  husband.     For  Tito  had  thoroughly 


276  ROMOLA. 

frightened  Tessa  into  silence  about  the  circumstances  of  their 
marriage,  by  telling  her  that  if  she  broke  that  silence  she 
would  never  see  him  again  ;  and  Monna  Lisa's  deafness,  which 
made  it  impossible  to  say  anything  to  her  without  some  pre- 
meditation, had  saved  Tessa  from  any  incautious  revelation  to 
her,  such  as  had  run  off  her  tongue  in  talking  with  Baldassarre. 
For  a  long  while  Tito's  visits  were  so  rare,  that  it  seemed  likely 
enough  he  took  journeys  between  them.  They  were  prompted 
chiefly  by  the  desire  to  see  that  all  things  were  going  on  well 
with  Tessa ;  and  though  he  always  found  his  visit  pleasanter 
than  the  prospect  of  it  —  always  felt  anew  the  charm  of  that 
pretty  ignorant  lovingness  and  trust  —  he  had  not  yet  any 
real  need  of  it.  But  he  was  determined,,  if  possible,  to  pre- 
serve the  simplicity  on  which  the  charm  depended ;  to  keep 
Tessa  a  genuine  contadina,  and  not  place  the  small  field-flower 
among  conditions  that  would  rob  it  of  its  grace.  He  would 
have  been  shocked  to  see  her  in  the  dress  of  any  other  rank 
than  her  own ;  the  piquancy  of  her  talk  would  be  all  gone,  if 
things  began  to  have  new  relations  for  her,  if  her  world  be- 
came wider,  her  pleasures  less  childish ;  and  the  squirrel-like 
enjoyment  of  nuts  at  discretion  marked  the  standard  of  the 
luxuries  he  had  provided  for  her.  By  this  means,  Tito  saved 
Tessa's  charm  from  being  sullied  ;  and  he  also,  by  a  convenient 
coincidence,  saved  himself  from  aggravating  expenses  that 
were  already  rather  importunate  to  a  man  whose  money  was 
all  required  for  his  avowed  habits  of  life. 

This,  in  brief,  had  been  the  history  of  Tito's  relation  to 
Tessa  up  to  a  very  recent  date.  It  is  true  that  once  or  twice 
before  Bardo's  death  the  sense  that  there  was  Tessa  up  the 
hill,  with  whom  it  was  possible  to  pass  an  hour  agreeably,  had 
been  an  inducement  to  him  to  escape  from  a  little  weariness 
of  the  old  man,  when,  for  lack  of  any  positive  engagement,  he 
might  otherwise  have  borne  the  weariness  patiently  and  shared 
Romola's  burden.  But  the  moment  when  he  had  first  felt 
a  real  hunger  for  Tessa's  ignorant  lovingness  and  belief  in  him 
had  not  come  till  quite  lately,  and  it  was  distinctly  marked 
out  by  circumstances  as  little  to  be  forgotten  as  the  oncoming 
of  a  malady  that  has  })ermanently  vitiated  the  sight  and  hear- 
ing. It  was  the  day  when  he  had  first  seen  Baldassarre,  and 
had  bought  the  armor.  Returning  across  the  bridge  that 
night,  with  the  coat  of  mail  in  his  hands,  he  had  felt  an  uncon- 
querable shrinking  from  an  immediate  encounter  with  Romola. 
She,  too,  knew  little  of  tlie  actual  world  ;  slie,  too,  trusted 
him ;  but  he  had  an  uneasy  consciousness  that  behind  her  frank 


NO  PLACE  FOR  REPENTANCE.  277 

eyes  there  was  a  nature  that  could  judge  him,  and  that  any 
ill-founded  trust  of  hers  sprang  not  from  pretty  brute-like 
incapacity,  but  from  a  nobleness  which  might  prove  an  alarm- 
ing touchstone.  He  wanted  a  little  ease,  a  little  repose  from 
self-control,  after  the  agitation  and  exertions  of  the  day  ;  he 
wanted  to  be  where  he  could  adjust  his  mind  to  the  morrow, 
without  caring  how  he  behaved  at  the  present  moment.  And 
there  was  a  sweet  adoring  creature  within  reach  whose  pres- 
ence was  as  safe  and  unconstraining  as  that  of  her  own  kids, 
—  who  would  believe  any  fable,  and  remain  quite  unimpressed 
by  public  opinion.  And  so  on  that  evening,  when  Romola  was 
waiting  and  listening  for  him,  he  turned  his  steps  up  the  hill. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  the  steps  took  the  same  course  on  this 
evening,  eleven  days  later,  when  he  had  had  to  recoil  under 
Romola's  first  outburst  of  scorn.  He  could  not  wish  Tessa  in 
his  wife's  place,  or  refrain  from  wishing  that  his  wife  should 
be  thoroughly  reconciled  to  him  ;  for  it  was  Romola,  and  not 
Tessa,  that  belonged  to  the  world  where  all  the  larger  desires 
of  a  man  who  had  ambition  and  effective  faculties  must  neces- 
sarily lie.  But  he  wanted  a  refuge  from  a  standard  disagree- 
ably rigorous,  of  which  he  could  not  make  himself  independent 
simply  by  thinking  it  folly ;  and  Tessa's  little  soul  was  that 
inviting  refuge. 

It  was  not  much  more  than  eight  o'clock  when  he  went  up 
the  stone  steps  to  the  door  of  Tessa's  room.  Usually  she 
heard  his  entrance  into  the  house,  and  ran  to  meet  him.  but 
not  to-night;  and  when  he  opened  the  door  he  saw  the 
reason.  A  single  dim  light  was  burning  above  the  dying  fire, 
and  showed  Tessa  in  a  kneeling  attitude  by  the  head  of  the 
bed  where  the  baby  lay.  Her  head  had  fallen  aside  on  the  pil- 
low, and  her  brown  rosary,  which  usually  hung  above  the 
pillow  over  the  picture  of  the  Madonna  and  the  golden  palm- 
branches,  lay  in  the  loose  grasp  of  her  right  hand.  She  had 
gone  fast  asleep  over  her  beads.  Tito  stepped  lightly  across 
the  little  room,  and  sat  down  close  to  her.  She  had  probably 
heard  the  opening  of  the  door  as  part  of  her  dream,  for  he  had 
not  been  looking  at  her  two  moments  before  she  opened  her 
eyes.  She  opened  them  without  any  start,  and  remained 
quite  motionless  looking  at  him,  as  if  the  sense  that  he  was 
there  smiling  at  her  shut  out  any  impulse  which  could  dis- 
turb that  happy  passiveness.  But  when  he  put  his  hand  under 
her  chin,  and  stooped  to  kiss  her,  she  said,  — 

"  I  dreamed  it,  and  then  I  said  it  was  dreaming  —  and  then 
I  awoke,  and  it  was  true." 


278  ROMOLA. 

"  Little  sinner  ! "  said  Tito,  pinching  her  chin,  "  you  have 
not  said  half  your  prayers.  I  will  punish  you  by  not  looking 
at  your  baby ;  it  is  ugly." 

Tessa  did  not  like  those  words,  even  though  Tito  was  smil- 
ing. She  had  some  pouting  distress  in  her  face,  as  she  said, 
bending  anxiously  over  the  baby,  — 

"  Ah,  it  is  not  true !  He  is  prettier  than  anything.  You 
do  not  think  he  is  ugly.  You  will  look  at  him.  He  is  even 
prettier  than  when  you  saw  him  before  —  only  he's  asleep,  and 
you  can't  see  his  eyes  or  his  tongue,  and  I  can't  show  you  his 
hair  —  and  it  grows  —  isn't  that  wonderful  ?  Look  at  him  ! 
It's  true  his  face  is  very  much  all  alike  when  he's  asleep, 
there  is  not  so  much  to  see  as  when  he's  awake.  If  you  kiss 
him  very  gently,  he  won't  wake  :  you  want  to  kiss  him,  is  it 
not  true  ? " 

He  satisfied  her  by  giving  the  small  mummy  a  butterfly 
kiss,  and  then,  putting  his  hand  on  her  shoulder  and  turning 
her  face  towards  him,  said,  "  You  like  looking  at  the  baby 
better  than  looking  at  your  husband,  you  false  one  ! " 

She  was  still  kneeling,  and  now  rested  her  hands  on  his 
knee,  looking  up  at  him  like  one  of  Fra  Lippo  Lippi's  round- 
cheeked  adoring  angels. 

"  No,"  she  said,  shaking  her  head  ;  "  I  love  you  always  best, 
only  I  want  you  to  look  at  the  bambino  and  love  him ;  I  used 
only  to  want  you  to  love  me." 

"  And  did  you  expect  me  to  come  again  so  soon  ?  "  said  Tito, 
inclined  to  make  her  prattle.  He  still  felt  the  effects  of  the 
agitation  he  had  undergone  —  still  felt  like  a  man  who  has 
been  violently  jarred ;  and  this  was  the  easiest  relief  from 
silence  and  solitude. 

"Ah,  no,"  said  Tessa,  "I  have  counted  the  days  — to-day  I 
began  at  my  right  thumb  again  —  since  you  put  on  the  beau- 
tiful chain-coat,  that  Messer  San  Michele  gave  you  to  take 
care  of  you  on  your  journey.  And  you  have  got  it  on  now," 
she  said,  peeping  through  the  opening  in  the  breast  of  his 
tunic.     "  Perhaps  it  made  you  come  back  sooner." 

"  Perhaps  it  did,  Tessa,"  he  said.  •*  But  don't  mind  the  coat 
now.  Tell  me  what  has  happened  since  I  was  here.  Did  you 
see  the  tents  in  the  Prato,  and  the  soldiers  and  horsemen  when 
they  passed  the  bridges  —  did  you  hear  the  drums  and 
trumpets  ?  " 

"  Yes,  and  I  was  rather  frightened,  because  I  thought  the 
soldiers  might  come  up  here.  And  Monna  Lisa  was  a  little 
afraid  too,  for  she  said  they  might  carry  our  kids  off;  she  said 


NO  PLACE  FOR  REPENTANCE.  279 

it  was  their  business  to  do  mischief.  But  the  Holy  Madonna 
took  care  of  us,  for  we  never  saw  one  of  them  up  here.  But 
something  has  happened,  only  I  hardly  dare  tell  you,  and  that 
is  what  I  was  saying  more  Aves  for." 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Tessa  ?  "  said  Tito,  rather  anxiously. 
"  Make  haste  and  tell  me." 

"Yes,  but  will  you  let  me  sit  on  your  knee  ?  because  then  I 
think  I  shall  not  be  so  frightened." 

He  took  her  on  his  knee,  and  put  his  arm  round  her,  but 
looked  grave :  it  seemed  that  something  unpleasant  must  pur- 
sue him  even  here. 

"  At  first  I  didn't  mean  to  tell  you,"  said  Tessa,  speaking 
almost  in  a  whisper,  as  if  that  would  mitigate  the  offence  ; 
"because  we  thought  the  old  man  would  be  gone  away  before 
you  came  again,  and  it  would  be  as  if  it  had  not  been.  But 
now  he  is  there  and  you  are  come,  and  I  never  did  anything 
you  told  me  not  to  do  before.  And  I  want  to  tell  you,  and 
then  you  will  perhaps  forgive  me,  for  it  is  a  long  while  before 
I  go  to  confession." 

"  Yes,  tell  me  everything,  my  Tessa."  He  began  to  hope  it 
was  after  all  a  trivial  matter. 

"  Oh,  you  will  be  sorry  for  him  :  I'm  afraid  he  cries  about 
something  when  I  don't  see  him.  But  that  was  not  the  reason 
I  went  to  him  first ;  it  was  because  I  wanted  to  talk  to  him 
and  show  him  my  baby,  and  he  was  a  stranger  that  lived  no- 
where, and  I  thought  you  wouldn't  care  so  much  about  my 
talking  to  him.  And  I  think  he  is  not  a  bad  old  man,  and  he 
wanted  to  come  and  sleep  on  the  straw  next  to  the  goats,  and 
I  made  Monna  Lisa  say,  '  Yes,  he  might,'  and  he's  away  all 
the  day  almost,  but  when  he  comes  back  I  talk  to  him,  and 
take  him  something  to  eat." 

"  Some  beggar,  I  suppose.  It  was  naughty  of  you,  Tessa, 
and  I  am  angry  with  Monna  Lisa.  I  must  have  him  sent 
away." 

"  N"o,  I  think  he  is  not  a  beggar,  for  he  wanted  to  pay  Monna 
Lisa,  only  she  asked  him  to  do  work  for  her  instead.  And  he 
gets  himself  shaved,  and  his  clothes  are  tidy  :  Monna  Lisa 
says  he  is  a  decent  man.  But  sometimes  I  think  he  is  not  in 
his  right  mind :  Lupo,  at  Peretola,  was  not  in  his  right  mind, 
and  he  looks  a  little  like  Lupo  sometimes,  as  if  he  didn't  know 
where  he  was." 

"  What  sort  of  face  has  he  ?  "  said  Tito,  his  heart  beginning 
to  beat  strangely.  He  was  so  haunted  by  the  thought  of  Bal- 
dassarre,  that  it  was  already  he  whom  he  saw  in  imagination 


280  ROMOLA. 

sitting  on  tlie  straw  not  many  yards  from  him.  ''  Fetch  your 
stool,  my  Tessa,  and  sit  on  it." 

"  Shall  yovi  not  forgive  me  ?  "  she  said,  timidly,  moving 
from  his  knee. 

"  Yes,  I  will  not  be  angry  —  only  sit  down,  and  tell  me  what 
sort  of  old  man  this  is." 

"  I  can't  think  how  to  tell  you  :  he  is  not  like  my  stepfather 
Kofri,  or  anybody.  His  face  is  yellow,  and  he  has  deep  marks 
in  it ;  and  his  hair  is  white,  but  there  is  none  on  the  top  of  his 
head  :  and  his  eyebrows  are  black,  and  he  looks  from  under 
them  at  me,  and  says,  '  Poor  thing ! '  to  me,  as  if  he  thought 
I  was  beaten  as  I  used  to  be ;  and  that  seems  as  if  he  couldn't 
be  in  his  right  mind,  doesn't  it  ?  And  I  asked  him  his  name 
once,  but  he  couldn't  tell  it  me :  yet  everybody  has  a  name  — 
is  it  not  true  ?  And  he  has  a  book  now,  and  keeps  looking  at 
it  ever  so  long,  as  if  he  were  a  Padre.  But  I  think  he  is  not 
saying  prayers,  for  his  lips  never  move  ;  —  ah,  you  are  angry 
with  me,  or  is  it  because  you  are  sorry  for  the  old  man  ?  " 

Tito's  eyes  were  still  fixed  on  Tessa;  but  he  had  ceased  to 
see  her,  and  was  only  seeing  the  objects  her  words  suggested. 
It  was  this  absent  glance  which  frightened  her,  and  she  could 
not  help  going  to  kneel  at  his  side  again.  But  he  did  not  heed 
her,  and  she  dared  not  touch  him,  or  speak  to  him  :  she  knelt, 
trembling  and  wondering ;  and  this  state  of  mind  suggesting 
her  beads  to  her,  she  took  them  from  the  floor,  and  began  to 
tell  them  again,  her  pretty  lips  moving  silently,  and  her  blue 
eyes  wide  with  anxiety  and  struggling  tears. 

Tito  was  quite  unconscious  of  her  movements  —  uncon- 
scious of  his  own  attitude :  he  was  in  that  rapt  state  in 
which  a  man  will  grasp  painful  roughness,  and  press  and  press 
it  closer,  and  never  feel  it.  A  new  possibility  had  risen  before 
him,  which  might  dissolve  at  once  the  wretched  conditions  of 
fear  and  suppression  that  were  marring  his  life.  Destiny  had 
l)rought  within  his  reach  an  opportunity  of  retrieving  that 
moment  on  the  steps  of  the  Duomo,  when  the  Past  had 
grasped  him  with  living  quivering  hands,  and  he  had  disowned 
it.  A  few  steps,  and  he  might  be  face  to  face  with  his  father, 
with  no  witness  by  ;  he  might  seek  forgiveness  and  reconcili- 
ation ;  and  there  was  money  now,  from  the  sale  of  the  library, 
to  enable  them  to  leave  Florence  without  disclosure,  and  go 
into  Southern  Italy,  where  under  the  probable  French  rule,  he 
had  already  laid  a  foundation  for  patronage.  Eomola  need 
never  know  the  whole  truth,  for  she  could  have  no  certain 
means  of  identifying  the  prisoner  in  the  Duomo  with  Baldas 


NO  PLACE  FOR  REPENTANCE.  281 

?arre,  or  of  learning  what  had  taken  place  on  the  steps,  except 
from  Baldassarre  liimself ;  and  if  his  father  forgave,  he  would 
also  consent  to  bury  that  offence. 

But  with  this  possibility  of  relief,  by  an  easy  spring,  from 
present  evil,  there  rose  the  other  possibility,  that  the  fierce- 
hearted  man  might  refuse  to  be  propitiated.  Well  —  and  if  he 
did,  things  would  only  be  as  they  had  been  before ;  for  there 
would  be  no  witness  by.  It  was  not  repentance  with  a  white 
sheet  round  it  and  taper  in  hand,  confessing  its  hated  sin  in 
the  eyes  of  men,  that  Tito  was  preparing  for  :  it  was  a  repent- 
ance that  would  make  all  things  pleasant  again,  and  keep  all 
past  unpleasant  things  secret.  And  Tito's  soft-heartedness, 
his  indisposition  to  feel  himself  in  harsh  relations  with  any 
creature,  was  in  strong  activity  towards  his  father,  now  his 
father  was  brought  near  to  him.  It  would  be  a  state  of  ease 
that  his  nature  could  not  but  desire,  if  the  poisonous  hatred  in 
Baldassarre's  glance  could  be  replaced  by  something  of  the 
old  affection  and  complacency. 

Tito  longed  to  have  his  world  once  again  completely  cush- 
ioned with  good-will,  and  longed  for  it  the  more  eagerly  be- 
cause of  what  he  had  just  suffered  from  the  collision  with 
Romola.  It  was  not  difficult  to  him  to  smile  pleadingly  on 
those  whom  he  had  injured,  and  offer  to  do  them  much  kind- 
ness :  and  no  quickness  of  intellect  could  tell  him  exactly  the 
taste  of  that  honey  on  the  lips  of  the  injured.  The  oppor- 
tunity was  there,  and  it  raised  an  inclination  which  hemmed 
in  the  calculating  activity  of  his  thought.  He  started  up,  and 
stepped  towards  the  door;  but  Tessa's  cry,  as  she  dropped 
her  beads,  roused  him  from  his  absorption.  He  turned  and 
said,  — 

"•  My  Tessa,  get  me  a  lantern ;  and  don't  cry,  little  pigeon, 
I  am  not  angry." 

They  went  down  the  stairs,  and  Tessa  was  going  to  shout 
the  need  of  the  lantern  in  Monna  Lisa's  ear,  when  Tito,  who 
had  opened  the  door,  said,  *'  Stay,  Tessa  —  no,  I  want  no 
lantern  :  go  upstairs  again,  and  keep  quiet,  and  say  nothing 
to  Monna  Lisa." 

In  half  a  minute  he  stood  before  the  closed  door  of  the  out- 
house, where  the  moon  was  shining  white  on  the  old  paintless 
wood. 

In  this  last  decisive  moment,  Tito  felt  a  tremor  upon  him  — 
a  sudden  instinctive  shrinking  from  a  possible  tiger-glance,  a 
possible  tiger-leap.  Yet  why  should  he,  a  young  man,  be 
afraid  of  an  old  one  ?  a  young  man  with  armor  on,  of  an  old 


282  ROM  OLA. 

man  without  a  weapon  ?  It  was  but  a  moment's  hesitation, 
and  Tito  laid  his  hand  on  the  door.  Was  his  father  asleep  ? 
Was  there  nothing  else  but  the  door  that  screened  him  from 
the  voice  and  the  glance  which  no  magic  could  turn  into  ease  ? 

Baldassarre  was  not  asleep.  There  was  a  square  opening 
high  in  the  wall  of  the  hovel,  through  Avhich  the  moonbeams 
sent  in  a  stream  of  pale  light :  and  if  Tito  could  have  looked 
through  the  opening,  he  would  have  seen  his  father  seated  on 
the  straw,  with  something  that  shone  like  a  white  star  in  his 
hand.  Baldassarre  was  feeling  the  edge  of  his  poniard,  tak- 
ing refuge  in  that  sensation  from  a  hopeless  blank  of  thought 
that  seemed  to  lie  like  a  great  gulf  between  his  passion  and 
its  aim. 

He  was  in  one  of  his  most  wretched  moments  of  conscious 
helplessness  :  he  had  been  poring,  while  it  was  light,  over  the 
book  that  lay  open  beside  him ;  then  he  had  been  trying  to 
recall  the  names  of  his  jewels,  and  the  symbols  engraved  on 
them :  and  though  at  certain  other  times  he  had  recovered 
some  of  those  names  and  symbols,  to-night  they  were  all  gone 
into  darkness.  And  this  effort  at  inward  seeing  had  seemed 
to  end  in  utter  paralysis  of  memory.  He  was  reduced  to  a 
sort  of  mad  consciousness  that  he  was  a  solitary  pulse  of  just 
rage  in  a  world  filled  with  defiant  baseness.  He  had  clutched 
and  unsheathed  his  dagger,  and  for  a  long  while  had  been  feel, 
ing  its  edge,  his  mind  narrowed  to  one  image,  and  the  dream 
of  one  sensation  —  the  sensation  of  plunging  that  dagger  into 
a  base  heart,  which  he  was  unable  to  pierce  in  any  other  way. 

Tito  had  his  hand  on  the  door  and  was  pulling  it :  it  dragged 
against  the  ground  as  such  old  doors  often  do,  and  Baldassarre, 
startled  out  of  his  dreamlike  state,  rose  from  his  sitting  pos- 
ture in  vague  amazement,  not  knowing  where  he  was.  He 
had  not  yet  risen  to  his  feet,  and  was  still  kneeling  on  one 
knee,  when  the  door  came  wide  open  and  he  saw,  dark  against 
the  moonlight,  with  the  rays  falling  on  one  bright  mass  of 
curls  and  one  rounded  olive  cheek,  the  image  of  his  reverie  — 
not  shadowy  —  close  and  real,  like  water  at  the  lips  after  the 
thirsty  dream  of  it.  No  thought  could  come  athwart  that 
eager  thirst.  In  one  moment,  before  Tito  could  start  back, 
the  old  man,  with  the  preternatural  force  of  rage  in  his  limbs, 
had  sprung  forward,  and  the  dagger  had  flashed  out.  In  the 
next  moment  the  dagger  had  snapped  in  two,  and  Baldassarre, 
under  the  parrying  force  of  Tito's  arm,  had  fallen  back  on  the 
straw,  clutching  the  hilt  with  its  bit  of  broken  blade.  The 
pointed  end  lay  shining  against  Tito's  feet. 


NO  PLACE  FOR   REPENTANCE.  288 

Tito  had  felt  one  great  heart-leap  of  terror  as  he  had  stag- 
gered under  the  weight  of  the  thrust :  he  felt  now  the  triumph 
of  deliverance  and  safety.  His  armor  had  been  proved,  and 
vengeance  lay  helpless  before  him.  But  the  triumph  raised 
no  devilish  impulse  :  on  the  contrary,  the  sight  of  his  father 
close  to  him  and  unable  to  injure  him,  made  the  effort  at 
reconciliation  easier.  He  was  free  from  fear,  but  he  had  only 
the  more  unmixed  and  direct  want  to  be  free  from  the  sense 
that  he  was  hated.  After  they  had  looked  at  each  other  a 
little  while,  Baldassarre  lying  motionless  in  despairing  rage, 
Tito  said  in  his  soft  tones,  just  as  they  had  sounded  before  the 
last  parting  on  the  shores  of  Greece,  — 

"  Padre  mio  !  "  There  was  a  pause  after  those  words,  but 
no  movement  or  sound  till  he  said,  — 

"I  came  to  ask  your  forgiveness  !  " 

Again  he  paused,  that  the  healing  balm  of  those  words 
might  have  time  to  work.  But  there  was  no  sign  of  change 
in  Baldassarre :  he  lay  as  he  had  fallen,  leaning  on  one  arm : 
he  was  trembling,  but  it  was  from  the  shock  that  had  thrown 
him  down. 

"  I  was  taken  by  surprise  that  morning.  I  wish  now  to  be 
a  son  to  you  again.  I  wish  to  make  the  rest  of  your  life 
happy,  that  you  may  forget  what  you  have  suffered." 

He  paused  again.  He  had  used  the  clearest  and  strongest 
words  he  could  think  of.  It  was  useless  to  say  more,  until  he 
had  some  sign  that  Baldassarre  understood  him.  Perhaps  his 
mind  was  too  distempered  or  too  imbecile  even  for  that :  per- 
haps the  shock  of  his  fall  and  his  disappointed  rage  might 
have  quite  suspended  the  use  of  his  faculties. 

Presently  Baldassarre  began  to  move.  He  threw  away  the 
broken  dagger,  and  slowly  and  gradually,  still  trembling, 
began  to  raise  himself  from  the  ground.  Tito  put  out  his 
hand  to  help  him,  and  so  strangely  quick  are  men's  souls  that 
in  this  moment,  when  he  began  to  feel  his  atonement  was 
accepted,  he  had  a  darting  thought  of  the  irksome  efforts  it 
entailed.  Baldassarre  clutched  the  hand  that  was  held  out, 
raised  himself  and  clutched  it  still,  going  close  up  to  Tito  till 
their  faces  were  not  a  foot  off  each  other.  Then  he  began  to 
speak,  in  a  deep,  trembling  voice,  — 

''  I  saved  you  —  I  nurtured  you  —  I  loved  you.  You  for- 
sook me  —  you  robbed  me  —  you  denied  me.  What  can  you 
give  me  ?  You  have  made  the  world  bitterness  to  me ;  but 
there  is  one  draught  of  sweetness  left  —  that  you  shall  know 
agonyy 


284  ROMOLA. 

He  let  fall  Tito's  hand,  and  going  backwards  a  little,  first 
rested  his  arm  on  a  projecting  stone  in  the  wall,  and  then 
,  sank  again  in  a  sitting  posture  on  the  straw.  The  outleap  of 
fury  in  the  dagger-thrust  had  evidently  exhausted  him. 

Tito  stood  silent.  If  it  had  been  a  deep  yearning  emotion 
which  had  brought  him  to  ask  his  father's  forgiveness,  tlie 
denial  of  it  might  have  caused  him  a  pang  which  would  have 
excluded  the  rushing  train  of  thought  that  followed  those 
decisive  words.  As  it  was,  though  the  sentence  of  unchange- 
able hatred  grated  on  him  and  jarred  him  terribly,  his  mind 
glanced  round  with  a  self-preserving  instinct  to  see  how  far 
those  words  could  have  the  force  of  a  substantial  threat. 
When  he  had  come  down  to  speak  to  Baldassarre,  he  had  said 
to  himself  that  if  his  effort  at  reconciliation  failed,  things 
would  only  be  as  they  had  been  before.  The  first  glance  of 
his  mind  was  backward  to  that  thought  again,  but  the  future 
possibilities  of  danger  that  were  conjured  up  along  with  it 
brought  the  perception  that  things  were  not  as  they  had  been 
before,  and  the  perception  came  as  a  triumphant  relief.  There 
was  not  only  the  broken  dagger,  there  was  the  certainty,  from 
what  Tessa  had  told  him,  that  Baldassarre's  mind  was  broken 
too,  and  had  no  edge  that  could  reach  him.  Tito  felt  he  had 
no  choice  now :  he  must  defy  Baldassarre  as  a  mad,  imbecile 
old  man ;  and  the  chances  were  so  strongly  on  his  side  that 
there  was  hardly  room  for  fear.  Xo ;  except  the  fear  of  having 
to  do  many  unpleasant  things  in  order  to  save  himself  from 
what  was  yet  more  unpleasant.  And  one  of  those  unpleasant 
things  must  be  done  immediately  :  it  was  very  difficult. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  stay  here  ?  "  he  said. 

"No,"  said  Baldassarre,  bitterly,  "you  mean  to  turn  me 
out." 

"Not  so,"  said  Tito  ;  "I  only  ask." 

"  I  tell  you,  you  have  turned  me  out.  If  it  is  your  straw, 
you  turned  me  off  it  three  years  ago." 

"  Then  you  mean  to  leave  this  place  ?  "  said  Tito,  more 
anxious  about  this  certainty  than  the  ground  of  it. 

"  I  have  spoken,"  said  Baldassarre. 

Tito  turned  and  re-entered  the  house.  Monna  Lisa  was 
nodding ;  he  went  up  to  Tessa,  and  found  her  crying  by  the 
side  of  her  baby. 

"Tessa,"  he  said,  sitting  down  and  taking  her  head  between 
his  hands  ;  "leave  off  crying,  little  goose,  and  listen  to  me." 

He  lifted  her  chin  upward,  that  she  might  look  at  him, 
while  he  spoke  very  distinctly  and  emphatically. 


WHAT  FLORENCE    WAS   THINKING   OF.        L'85 

"  You  must  never  speak  to  that  old  man  again.  He  is  a 
mad  old  man,  and  he  wants  to  kill  me.  Never  speak  to  him 
or  listen  to  him  again." 

Tessa's  tears  had  ceased,  and  her  lips  were  pale  with  fright. 

"  Is  he  gone  away  ?  "  she  whispered. 

"  He  will  go  away.     Remember  what  I  have  said  to  you." 

"  Yes ;  I  will  never  speak  to  a  stranger  any  more,"  said 
Tessa,  with  a  sense  of  guilt. 

He  told  her,  to  comfort  her,  that  he  would  come  again  to- 
morrow ;  and  then  went  down  to  Monna  Lisa  to  rebuke  her 
severely  for  letting  a  dangerous  man  come  about  the  house. 

Tito  felt  that  these  were  odious  tasks  ;  they  were  very  evil- 
tasted  morsels,  but  they  were  forced  upon  him.  He  heard 
Monna  Lisa  fasten  the  door  behind  him,  and  turned  away, 
without  looking  towards  the  open  door  of  the  hovel.  He  felt 
secure  that  Baldassarre  would  go,  and  he  could  not  wait  to  see 
him  go.  Even  his  young  frame  and  elastic  spirit  were  shat- 
tered by  the  agitations  that  had  been  crowded  into  this  single 
evening. 

Baldassarre  was  still  sitting  on  the  straw  when  the  shadow 
of  Tito  passed  by.  Before  him  lay  the  fragments  of  the 
broken  dagger ;  beside  him  lay  the  open  book,  over  which  he 
had  pored  in  vain.  They  looked  like  mocking  symbols  of  his 
utter  helplessness ;  and  his  body  was  still  too  trembling  for 
him  to  rise  and  walk  away. 

But  the  next  morning  very  early,  when  Tessa  peeped 
anxiously  through  the  hole  in  her  shutter,  the  door  of  the 
hovel  was  open,  and  the  strange  old  man  was  gone. 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

WHAT    FLORENCE    WAS    THINKING   OF. 

For  several  days  Tito  saw  little  of  Romola.  He  told  her 
gently,  the  next  morning,  that  it  would  be  better  for  her  to 
remove  any  small  articles  of  her  own  from  the  library,  as  there 
would  be  agents  coming  to  pack  up  the  antiquities.  Then, 
leaning  to  kiss  her  on  the  brow,  he  suggested  that  she  should 
keep  in  her  own  room  where  the  little  painted  tabernacle  was, 
and  where  she  was  then  sitting,  so  that  she  might  be  away 
from  the  noise  of  strange  footsteps.     Romola  assented  quietly, 


286  ROM  OLA. 

making  no  sign  of  emotion  :  the  night  had  been  one  long 
waking  to  her,  and,  in  spite  of  her  healthy  frame,  sensation 
had  become  a  dull  continuous  pain,  as  if  she  had  been  stunned 
and  bruised.  Tito  divined  that  she  felt  ill,  but  he  dared  say 
no  more ;  he  only  dared,  perceiving  that  her  hand  and  brow 
were  stone-cold,  to  fetch  a  furred  mantle  and  throw  it  lightly 
round  her.  And  in  every  brief  interval  that  he  returned  to 
her,  the  scene  was  nearly  the  same  :  he  tried  to  propitiate  her 
by  some  unobtrusive  act  or  word  of  tenderness,  and  she  seemed 
to  have  lost  the  power  of  speaking  to  him,  or  of  looking  at 
him.  "  Patience  !  "  he  said  to  himself.  "  She  will  recover  it, 
and  forgive  at  last.  The  tie  to  me  must  still  remain  the 
strongest."  When  the  stricken  person  is  slow  to  recover  and 
look  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  the  striker  easily  glides  into 
the  position  of  the  aggrieved  party ;  he  feels  no  bruise  him- 
self, and  is  strongly  conscious  of  his  own  amiable  behavior 
since  he  inflicted  the  blow.  But  Tito  was  not  naturally  dis- 
posed to  feel  himself  aggrieved  ;  the  constant  bent  of  his 
mind  was  towards  propitiation,  and  he  would  have  submitted 
to  much  for  the  sake  of  feeling  Komola's  hand  resting  on  his 
head  again,  as  it  did  that  iiiorning  when  he  first  shrank  from 
looking  at  her. 

But  he  found  it  the  less  difficult  to  wait  patiently  for  the 
return  of  his  home  happiness,  because  his  life  out  of  doors 
was  more  and  more  interesting  to  him.  A  course  of  action 
which  is  in  strictness  a  slowly  prepared  outgrowth  of  the 
entire  character,  is  yet  almost  always  traceable  to  a  single 
impression  as  its  point  of  apparent  origin ;  and  since  that 
moment  in  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  when  Tito,  mounted  on  the 
bales,  had  tasted  a  keen  pleasure  in  the  consciousness  of 
his  ability  to  tickle  the  ears  of  men  with  an}^  phrases  that 
pleased  them,  his  imagination  had  glanced  continually  towards 
a  sort  of  political  activity  which  the  troubled  public  life  of 
Florence  was  likely  enough  to  find  occasion  for.  But  the 
fresh  dread  of  Baldassarre,  waked  in  the  same  moment,  had 
lain  like  an  immovable  rocky  obstruction  across  that  path, 
and  had  urged  him  into  the  sale  of  the  library,  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  possible  necessity  of  leaving  Florence,  at  the  very 
time  when  he  was  beginning  to  feel  that  it  had  a  new  attrac- 
tion for  him.  That  dread  was  nearly  removed  now  :  he  must 
wear  his  armor  still,  he  must  prepare  himself  for  possible 
demands  on  his  coolness  and  ingenuity,  but  he  did  not  feel 
obliged  to  take  the  inconvenient  step  of  leaving  Florence  and 
seeking  new  fortunes.     His  father  had   refused   the   offered 


WHAT  FLORENCE    WAS   THINKING   OF.         287 

atonement  —  had  forced  him  into  defiance  ;  and  an  old  man  in 
a  strange  place,  with  his  memory  gone,  was  weak  enough  to 
be  defied. 

Tito's  implicit  desires  were  working  themselves  out  now  in 
v^ery  explicit  thoughts.  As  the  freshness  of  young  passion 
faded,  life  was  taking  more  and  more  decidedly  for  him  the 
aspect  of  a  game  in  which  there  was  an  agreeable  mingling  of 
skill  and  chance. 

And  the  game  that  might  be  played  in  Florence  promised  to 
be  rapid  and  exciting  ;  it  was  a  game  of  revolutionary  and 
party  struggle,  sure  to  include  plenty  of  that  unavowed  action 
in  which  brilliant  ingenuity,  able  to  get  rid  of  all  inconven- 
ient beliefs  except  that  ''  ginger  is  hot  in  the  mouth,''  is  apt  to 
see  the  path  of  superior  wisdom. 

No  sooner  were  the  French  guests  gone  than  Florence  was 
as  agitated  as  a  colony  of  ants  when  an  alarming  shadow  has 
been  removed,  and  the  camp  has  to  be  repaired.  "  How  are 
we  to  raise  the  money  for  the  French  king  ?  How  are  we  to 
manage  the  war  with  those  obstinate  Pisan  rebels  ?  Above 
all,  how  are  we  to  mend  our  plan  of  government,  so  as  to  hit 
on  the  best  way  of  getting  our  magistrates  chosen  and  our 
laws  voted  ?  "  Till  those  questions  were  well  answered  trade 
was  in  danger  of  standing  still,  and  that  large  body  of  the 
working  men  who  were  not  counted  as  citizens  and  had  not  so 
much  as  a  vote  to  serve  as  an  anodyne  to  their  stomachs  were 
likely  to  get  impatient.     Something  must  be  done. 

And  first-ithe  great  bell  was  sounded,  to  call  the  citizens  to 
a  parliament  in  the  Piazza  de'  Signori ;  and  when  the  crowd 
was  wedged  close,  and  hemmed  in  by  armed  men  at  all  the 
outlets,  the  Signoria  (or  Gonfaloniere  and  eight  Priors  for  the 
time  being)  came  out  and  stood  by  the  stone  lion  on  the  plat- 
form in  front  of  the  Old  Palace,  and  proposed  that  twenty 
chief  men  of  the  city  should  have  dictatorial  authority  given 
them,  by  force  of  which  they  should  for  one  year  choose  all 
magistrates,  and  set  the  frame  of  government  in  order.  And 
the  people  shouted  their  assent,  and  felt  themselves  the  elec- 
tors of  the  Twenty.  This  kind  of  "  parliament  "  was  a  very 
old  Florentine  fashion,  by  which  the  will  of  the  few  was  made 
to  seem  the  choice  of  the  many. 

The  shouting  in  the  Piazza  was  soon  at  an  end,  but  not  so 
the  debating  inside  the  palace :  was  Florence  to  have  a  Great 
Council  after  the  Venetian  mode,  where  all  the  officers  of 
government  might  be  elected,  and  all  laws  voted  by  a  wide 
number  of  citizens  of  a  certain  age  and  of  ascertained  qualifi- 


288  ROMOLA. 

cations,  without  question  of  rank  or  party  ?  or,  was  it  to  be 
governed  on  a  narrower  and  less  popular  scheme,  in  which  the 
hereditary  influence  of  good  families  would  be  less  adulterated 
with  the  votes  of  shopkeepers.  Doctors  of  law  disputed  day 
after  day,  and  far  on  into  the  night.  Messer  Pagolantonio 
Soderini  alleged  excellent  reasons  on  the  side  of  the  popular 
scheme  ;  Messer  Guidantonio  Vespucci  alleged  reasons  equally 
excellent  on  the  side  of  a  more  aristocratic  form.  It  was  a 
question  of  boiled  or  roast,  which  had  been  prejudged  by  the 
palates  of  the  disputants,  and  the  excellent  arguing  might 
have  been  protracted  a  long  while  without  any  other  result 
than  that  of  deferring  the  cooking.  The  majority  of  the  men 
inside  the  palace,  having  power  already  in  their  hands,  agreed 
with  Vespucci,  and  thought  change  should  be  moderate  ;  the 
majority  outside  the  palace,  conscious  of  little  power  and 
many  grievances,  were  less  afraid  of  change. 

And  there  was  a  force  outside  the  palace  which  was  grad- 
ually tending  to  give  the  vague  desires  of  that  majority  the 
character  of  a  determinate  will.  That  force  was  the  preach- 
ing of  Savonarola.  Impelled  partly  by  the  spiritual  necessity 
that  was  laid  upon  him  to  guide  the  people,  and  partly  by  the 
prompting  of  public  men  who  could  get  no  measures  carried 
without  his  aid,  he  was  rapidly  passing  in  his  daily  sermons 
from  the  general  to  the  special  —  from  telling  his  hearers  that 
they  must  postpone  their  private  passions  and  interests  to  the 
public  good,  to  telling  them  precisely  what  sort  of  govern- 
ment they  must  have  in  order  to  promote  that  good  —  from 
"Choose  whatever  is  best  for  all"  to  "Choose  the  Great 
Council,"  and  "  the  Great  Council  is  the  will  of  God." 

To  Savonarola  these  were  as  good  as  identical  propositions. 
The  Great  Council  was  the  only  practicable  plan  for  giving  an 
expression  to  the  public  will  large  enough  to  counteract  the 
vitiating  influence  of  party  interests :  it  was  a  plan  that 
would  make  honest  impartial  public  action  at  least  possible. 
And  the  purer  the  government  of  Florence  would  become  — 
the  more  secure  from  the  designs  of  men  who  saw  their  own 
advantage  in  the  moral  debasement  of  their  fellows  —  the 
nearer  would  the  Florentine  people  approach  the  character  of 
a  pure  community,  worthy  to  lead  the  way  in  the  renovation 
of  the  Church  and  the  world.  And  I'ra  Girolamo's  mind 
never  stopped  short  of  that  sublimest  end :  the  objects 
towards  which  he  felt  himself  working  had  always  the  same 
moral  magnificence.  He  had  no  ])rivate  malice  —  besought 
no  petty  gratification.     Even  in  the  last  terrible  days,  when 


ARIADNE  DISCROWNS  HERSELF.  289 

ignominy,  torture,  and  the  fear  of  torture,  had  laid  bare  e  very- 
hidden  weakness  of  his  soul,  he  could  say  to  his  importunate 
judges :  "  Do  not  wonder  if  it  seems  to  you  that  I  have  told 
but  few  things ;  for  my  purposes  were  few  and  great."  ^ 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

ARIADNE    DISCROWNS    HERSELF. 

It  was  more  than  three  weeks  before  the  contents  of  the 
library  were  all  packed  and  carried  away.  And  Romola,  in- 
stead of  shutting  her  eyes  and  ears,  had  watched  the  process. 
The  exhaustion  consequent  on  violent  emotion  is  apt  to  bring 
a  dreamy  disbelief  in  the  reality  of  its  cause ;  and  in  the 
evening,  when  the  workmen  were  gone,  Romola  took  her 
hand-lamp  and  walked  slowly  round  amongst  the  confusion 
of  straw  and  wooden  cases,  pausing  at  every  vacant  pedestal, 
every  well-known  object  laid  prostrate,  with  a  sort  of  bitter 
desire  to  assure  herself  that  there  was  a  sufficient  reason  why 
her  love  was  gone  and  the  world  was  barren  for  her.  And 
still,  as  the  evenings  came,  she  went  and  went  again ;  no 
longer  to  assure  herself,  but  because  this  vivifying  of  pain 
and  despair  about  her  father's  memory  was  the  strongest  life 
left  to  her  affections.  On  the  23d  of  December,  she  knew 
that  the  last  packages  were  going.  She  ran  to  the  loggia  at 
the  top  of  the  house  that  she  might  not  lose  the  last  pang  of 
seeing  the  slow  wheels  move  across  the  bridge. 

It  was  a  cloudy  day,  and  neariug  dusk.  Arno  ran  dark  and 
shivering;  the  hills  were  mournful;  and  Florence  with  its 
girdling  stone  towers  had  that  silent,  tomb-like  look,  which 
unbroken  shadow  gives  to  a  city  seen  from  above.  Santa 
Croce,  where  her  father  lay,  was  dark  amidst  that  darkness, 
and  slowly  crawling  over  the  bridge,  and  slowly  vanishing  up 
the  narrow  street,  was  the  white  load,  like  a  cruel,  deliberate 
Fate  carrying  away  her  father's  lifelong  hope  to  bury  it  in  an 
unmarked  grave.  Romola  felt  less  that  she  was  seeing  this 
herself  than  that  her  father  was  conscious  of  it  as  he  lay  help- 
less under  the  imprisoning  stones,  where  her  hand  could  not 
reach  his  to  tell  him  that  he  was  not  alone. 

'  "  Se  vi  pare  che  io  abbia  detto  poche  cose,  uou  ve  ne  maravigliate,  perch^  le  mie 
cose  erano  poche  e  graudi." 


290  ROMOLA. 

She  stood  still  even  after  the  load  had  disappeared,  heedless 
of  the  cold,  and  soothed  by  the  gloom  which  seemed  to  cover 
her  like  a  mourning  garment  and  shut  out  the  discord  of  joy. 
When  suddenly  the  great  bell  in  the  palace-tower  rang  out  a 
mighty  peal :  not  the  hammer-sound  of  alarm,  but  an  agitated 
peal  of  triumph ;  and  one  after  another  every  other  bell  in 
every  other  tower  seemed  to  catch  the  vibration  and  join  the 
chorus.  And,  as  the  chorus  swelled  and  swelled  till  the  air 
seemed  made  of  sound  —  little  flames,  vibrating  too,  as  if  the 
sound  had  caught  fire,  burst  out  between  the  turrets  of  the 
palace  and  on  the  girdling  towers. 

That  sudden  clang,  that  leaping  light,  fell  on  Romola  like 
sharp  wounds.  They  were  the  triumph  of  demons  at  the  suc- 
cess of  her  husband's  treacher}^,  and  the  desolation  of  her  life. 
Little  more  than  three  weeks  ago  she  had  been  intoxicated 
with  the  sound  of  those  very  bells ;  and  in  the  gladness  of 
Florence,  she  had  heard  a  prophecy  of  her  own  gladness.  But 
now  the  general  joy  seemed  cruel  to  her :  she  stood  aloof 
from  that  common  life  —  that  Florence  which  was  flinging  out 
its  loud  exultation  to  stun  the  ears  of  sorrow  and  loneliness. 
She  could  never  join  hands  with  gladness  again,  but  only 
with  those  whom  it  was  in  the  hard  nature  of  gladness  to 
forget.  And  in  her  bitterness  she  felt  that  all  rejoicing  was 
mockery.  Men  shouted  paeans  with  their  souls  full  of  heavi- 
ness, and  then  looked  in  their  neighbors'  faces  to  see  if  there 
was  really  such  a  thing  as  joy.  Romola  had  lost  her  belief  in 
the  happiness  she  had  once  thirsted  for :  it  was  a  hateful, 
smiling,  soft-handed  thing,  wvth  a  narrow,  selfish  heart. 

She  ran  down  from  the  loggia,  with  her  hands  pressed 
against  her  ears,  and  was  hurrying  across  the  ante-chamber, 
when  she  was  startled  by  unexpectedly  meeting  her  husband, 
who  was  coming  to  seek  her. 

His  step  was  elastic,  and  there  was  a  radiance  of  satisfaction 
about  him  not  quite  usual. 

"  What !  the  noise  was  a  little  too  much  for  you  ?  "  he  said  ; 
for  Romola,  as  she  started  at  the  sight  of  him,  had  pressed 
her  hands  all  the  closer  against  her  ears.  He  took  her  gently 
by  the  wrist,  and  drew  her  arm  within  his,  leading  her  into 
the  saloon  surrounded  with  the  dancing  nymphs  and  fauns, 
and  then  went  on  speaking :  "  Florence  is  gone  quite  mad  at 
getting  its  Great  Council,  which  is  to  put  an  end  to  all  the 
evils  under  the  sun ;  especially  to  the  vice  of  merriment. 
You  may  well  look  stunned,  my  Romola.  and  you  are  cold. 
You  must  not  stay  so  late  under  that  windy  loggia  without 


ARIADNE  DISCROWNS  HERSELF.  291 

wrappings.  I  was  coming  to  tell  you  that  I  am  suddenly 
called  to  Rome  about  some  learned  business  for  Bernardo 
Rucellai.  I  am  going  away  immediately,  for  I  am  to  join  my 
party  at  San  Gaggio  to-night,  that  we  may  start  early  in 
the  morning.  I  need  give  you  no  trouble  ;  I  have  had  my 
packages  made  already.  It  will  not  be  very  long  before  I  am 
back  again." 

He  knew  he  had  nothing  to  expect  from  her  but  quiet  en- 
durance of  what  he  said  and  did.  He  could  not  even  venture 
to  kiss  her  brow  this  evening,  but  just  pressed  her  hand  to  his 
lips,  and  left  her.  Tito  felt  that  Eomola  was  a  more  unforgiv- 
ing woman  than  he  had  imagined  ;  her  love  was  not  that 
sweet  clinging  instinct,  stronger  than  all  judgments,  which, 
he  began  to  see  now,  made  the  great  charm  of  a  wife.  Still, 
this  petrified  coldness  was  better  than  a  passionate,  futile 
opposition.  Her  pride  and  capability  of  seeing  where  resist- 
ance was  useless  had  their  convenience. 

But  when  the  door  had  closed  on  Tito,  Eomola  lost  the 
look  of  cold  immobility  which  came  over  her  like  an  inevit- 
able frost  whenever  he  approached  her.  Inwardly  she  Avas 
very  far  from  being  in  a  state  of  quiet  endurance,  and  the 
days  that  had  passed  since  the  scene  which  had  divided  her 
from  Tito  had  been  days  of  active  planning  and  preparation 
for  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose. 

The  first  thing  she  did  now  was  to  call  old  Maso  to  her. 

"  Maso,"  she  said,  in  a  decided  tone,  "we  take  our  journey 
to-morrow  morning.  We  shall  be  able  now  to  overtake  that 
first  convoy  of  cloth,  while  they  are  waiting  at  San  Piero. 
See  about  the  two  mules  to-night,  and  be  ready  to  set  off  with 
them  at  break  of  day,  and  wait  for  me  at  Trespiano." 

She  meant  to  take  Maso  with  her  as  far  as  Bologna,  and 
then  send  him  back  with  letters  to  her  godfather  and  Tito, 
telling  them  that  she  was  gone  and  never  meant  to  return. 
She  had  planned  her  departure  so  that  its  secrecy  might  be 
perfect,  and  her  broken  love  and  life  be  hidden  away  un- 
scanned  by  vulgar  eyes.  Bernardo  del  ISero  had  been  absent 
at  his  villa,  willing  to  escape  from  political  suspicions  to  his 
favorite  occupation  of  attending  to  his  land,  and  she  had  paid 
him  the  debt  without  a  personal  interview.  He  did  not  even 
know  that  the  library  was  sold,  and  was  left  to  conjecture  that 
some  sudden  piece  of  good  fortune  had  enabled  Tito  to  raise 
this  sum  of  money.  Maso  had  been  taken  into  her  confidence 
only  so  far  that  he  knew  her  intended  journey  was  a  secret ; 
and  to  do  just  what  she  told  him  was  the  thing  he  cared  most 
for  in  his  withered  wintry  age. 


292  ROMOLA. 

Romola  did  not  mean  to  go  to  bed  that  night.  When  she 
had  fastened  the  door  she  took  her  taper  to  the  carved  and 
painted  chest  which  contained  her  wedding-clothes.  The  white 
silk  and  gold  lay  there,  the  long  white  veil  and  the  circlet  of 
pearls.  A  great  sob  rose  as  she  looked  at  them :  they  seemed 
the  shroud  of  her  dead  happiness.  In  a  tiny  gold  loop  of  the 
circlet  a  sugar-plum  had  lodged  —  a  pink  hailstone  from  the 
shower  of  sweets :  Tito  had  detected  it  first,  and  had  said  that 
it  should  always  remain  there.  At  certain  moments  —  and  this 
was  one  of  them  —  Romola  was  carried,  by  a  sudden  wave  of 
memory,  back  again  into  the  time  of  perfect  trust,  and  felt 
again  the  presence  of  the  husband  whose  love  made  the 
world  as  fresh  and  wonderful  to  her  as  to  a  little  child  that 
sits  in  stillness  among  the  sunny  flowers  :  heard  the  gentle 
tones  and  saw  the  soft  eyes  without  any  lie  in  them,  and 
breathed  again  that  large  freedom  of  the  soul  which  comes 
from  the  faith  that  the  being  who  is  nearest  to  us  is  greater 
than  ourselves.  And  in  those  brief  moments  the  tears  always 
rose :  the  woman's  lovingness  felt  something  akin  to  what  the 
bereaved  mother  feels  when  the  tiny  fingers  seem  to  lie  warm 
on  her  bosom,  and  yet  are  marble  to  her  lips  as  she  bends  over 
the  silent  bed. 

But  there  was  something  else  lying  in  the  chest  besides  the 
wedding-clothes  :  it  was  something  dark  and  coarse,  rolled  up 
in  a  close  bundle.  She  turned  away  her  eyes  from  the  white 
and  gold  to  the  dark  bundle,  and  as  her  hands  touched  the 
serge,  her  tears  began  to  be  checked.  That  coarse  roughness 
recalled  her  fully  to  the  present,  from  which  love  and  delight 
were  gone.  She  unfastened  the  thick  white  cord  and  spread 
the  bundle  out  on  the  table.  It  was  the  gray  serge  dress  of  a 
sister  belonging  to  the  third  order  of  St.  Francis,  living  in  the 
world  but  especially  devoted  to  deeds  of  piety  —  a  personage 
whom  the  Florentines  were  accustomed  to  call  a  Pinzochera. 
Romola  was  going  to  put  on  this  dress  as  a  disguise,  and  she 
determined  to  put  it  on  at  once,  so  that,  if  she  needed  sleep 
before  the  morning,  she  might  wake  up  in  perfect  readiness  to 
be  gone.  She  put  off  her  black  garment,  and  as  she  thrust  her 
soft  white  arms  into  the  harsh  sleeves  of  the  serge  mantle  and 
felt  the  hard  girdle  of  rope  hurt  her  fingers  as  she  tied  it,  she 
courted  those  rude  sensations :  they  were  in  keeping  with  her 
new  scorn  of  that  thing  called  pleasure  which  made  men  base  — 
that  dexterous  contrivance  for  selfish  ease,  that  shrinking  from 
endurance  and  strain,  when  others  were  bowing  beneath  bur- 
dens too  heavy  for  them,  which  now  made  one  image  with  her 
husband. 


ARIADNE  DISCROWNS  HERSELF.  293 

Then  she  gathered  her  long  hair  together,  drew  it  away  tight 
from  her  face,  bound  it  in  a  great  hard  knot  at  the  back  of  her 
head,  and  taking  a  square  piece  of  black  silk,  tied  it  in  the 
fashion  of  a  kerchief  close  across  her  head  and  under  her  chin ; 
and  over  that  she  drew  the  cowl.  She  lifted  the  candle  to  the 
mirror.  Surely  her  disguise  would  be  complete  to  any  one 
who  had  not  lived  very  near  to  her.  To  herself  she  looked 
strangely  like  her  brother  Dino :  the  full  oval  of  the  cheek 
had  only  to  be  wasted  ;  the  eyes,  already  sad,  had  only  to  be- 
come a  little  sunken.  Was  she  getting  more  like  him  in  any- 
thing else  ?  Only  in  this,  that  she  understood  now  how  men 
could  be  prompted  to  rush  away  forever  from  earthly  delights, 
how  they  could  be  prompted  to  dwell  on  images  of  sorrow 
rather  than  of  beauty  and  joy. 

But  she  did  not  linger  at  the  mirror :  she  set  about  collect- 
ing and  packing  all  the  relics  of  her  father  and  mother  that 
were  too  large  to  be  carried  in  her  small  travelling-wallet. 
They  were  all  to  be  put  in  the  chest  along  with  her  wedding- 
clothes,  and  the  chest  was  to  be  committed  to  her  godfather 
when  she  was  safely  gone.  First  she  laid  in  the  portraits ; 
then  one  by  one  every  little  thing  that  had  a  sacred  memory 
clinging  to  it  was  put  into  her  wallet  or  into  the  chest. 

She  paused.  There  was  still  something  else  to  be  stripped 
away  from  her,  belonging  to  that  past  on  which  she  was  going 
to  turn  her  back  forever.  She  put  her  thumb  and  her  forefin- 
ger to  her  betrothal  ring ;  but  they  rested  there,  without  draw- 
ing it  off.  Romola's  mind  had  been  rushing  with  an  impetuous 
current  towards  this  act,  for  which  she  was  preparing :  the  act 
of  quitting  a  husband  who  had  disappointed  all  her  trust,  the 
act  of  breaking  an  outward  tie  that  no  longer  represented  the 
inward  bond  of  love.  But  that  force  of  outward  symbols  by 
which  our  active  life  is  knit  together  so  as  to  make  an  inexo- 
rable external  identity  for  us,  not  to  be  shaken  by  our  wavering 
consciousness,  gave  a  strange  effect  to  this  simple  movement 
towards  taking  off  her  ring  —  a  movement  which  was  but  a 
small  sequence  of  her  energetic  resolution.  It  brought  a  vague 
but  arresting  sense  that  she  was  somehow  violently  rending 
her  life  in  two :  a  presentiment  that  the  strong  impulse  which 
had  seemed  to  exclude  doubt  and  make  her  path  clear  might 
after  all  be  blindness,  and  that  there  was  something  in  human 
bonds  which  must  prevent  them  from  being  broken  with  the 
breaking  of  illusions. 

If  that  beloved  Tito  who  had  placed  the  betrothal  ring  on 
her  finger  was  not  in  any  valid  sense  the  same  Tito  whom  she 


294  ROMOLA. 

had  ceased  to  love,  why  should  she  return  to  him  the  sign  of 
their  union,  and  not  rather  retain  it  as  a  memorial  ?  And  this 
act,  which  came  as  a  palpable  demonstration  of  her  own  and 
his  identity,  had  a  power  unexplained  to  herself,  of  shaking 
Romola.  It  is  the  way  with  half  the  truth  amidst  which  we 
live,  that  it  only  haunts  us  and  makes  dull  pulsations  that  are 
never  born  into  sound.  But  there  was  a  passionate  voice  speak- 
ing within  her  that  presently  nullified  all  such  muffled  murmurs. 

"  It  cannot  be  !  I  cannot  be  subject  to  him.  He  is  false. 
I  shrink  from  him.     I  despise  him  !  " 

She  snatched  the  ring  from  her  finger  and  laid  it  on  the  table 
against  the  pen  with  which  she  meant  to  write.  Again  she 
felt  that  there  could  be  no  law  for  her  but  the  law  of  her  affec- 
tions. That  tenderness  and  keen  fellow-feeling  for  the  near 
and  the  loved  which  are  the  main  outgrowth  of  the  affections, 
had  made  the  religion  of  her  life  :  they  had  made  her  patient 
in  spite  of  natural  impetuosity ;  they  would  have  sufficed  to 
make  her  heroic.  But  now  all  that  strength  was  gone,  or 
rather,  it  was  converted  into  the  strength  of  repulsion.  She 
had  recoiled  from  Tito  in  proportion  to  the  energy  of  that 
young  belief  and  love  which  he  had  disappointed,  of  that  life- 
long devotion  to  her  father  against  which  he  had  committed  an 
irredeemable  offence.  And  it  seemed  as  if  all  motive  had 
slipped  away  from  her  ;  except  the  indignation  and  scorn  that 
made  her  tear  herself  asunder  from  him. 

She  was  not  acting  after  any  precedent,  or  obeying  any 
adopted  maxims.  The  grand  severity  of  the  stoical  philoso- 
phy in  which  her  father  had  taken  care  to  instruct  her,  was 
familiar  enough  to  her  ears  and  lips,  and  its  lofty  spirit  had 
raised  certain  echoes  within  her ;  but  she  had  never  used  it, 
never  needed  it  as  a  rule  of  life.  She  had  endured  and  for- 
borne because  she  loved :  maxims  which  told  her  to  feel  less, 
and  not  to  cling  close  lest  the  onward  course  of  great  Nature 
should  jar  her,  had  been  as  powerless  on  her  tenderness  as  they 
had  been  on  her  father's  yearning  for  just  fame.  She  had  ap- 
propriated no  theories  :  she  had  simply  felt  strong  in  the 
strength  of  affection,  and  life  without  that  energy  came  to 
her  as  an  entirely  new  problem. 

She  was  going  to  solve  the  problem  in  a  way  that  seemed 
to  her  very  simple.  Her  mind  had  never  yet  bowed  to  any 
obligation  apart  from  personal  love  and  reverence ;  she  had  no 
keen  sense  of  any  other  human  relations,  and  all  she  had  to 
obey  now  was  the  instinct  to  sever  herself  from  the  man  she 
loved  no  longer. 


ARIADNE  DISCROWNS  HERSELF.  295 

Yet  the  unswerving  resolution  was  accompanied  with  con- 
tinually varying  phases  of  anguish.  And  now  that  the  active 
preparation  for  her  departure  was  almost  finished,  she  lingered: 
she  deferred  writing  the  irrevocable  words  of  parting  from  all 
her  little  world.  The  emotions  of  the  past  weeks  seemed  to 
rush  in  again  with  cruel  hurry,  and  take  possession  even  of 
her  limbs.  She  was  going  to  write,  and  her  hand  fell.  Bitter 
tears  came  now  at  the  delusion  which  had  blighted  her  young 
years  :  tears  very  different  from  the  sob  of  remembered  hap- 
piness with  which  she  had  looked  at  the  circlet  of  pearls  and 
the  pink  hailstone.  And  now  she  felt  a  tingling  shame  at  the 
words  of  ignominy  she  had  cast  at  Tito  —  "  Have  you  robbed 
some  one  else  who  is  not  dead  ?  "  To  have  had  such  words 
wrung  from  her  —  to  have  uttered  them  to  her  husband  seemed 
a  degradation  of  her  whole  life.  Hard  speech  between  those 
who  have  loved  is  hideous  in  the  memory,  like  the  sight  of 
greatness  and  beauty  sunk  into  vice  and  rags. 

That  heart-cutting  comparison  of  the  present  with  the  past 
urged  itself  upon  Romola  till  it  even  transformed  itself  into 
wretched  sensations  :  she  seemed  benumbed  to  everything  but 
inward  throbbings,  and  began  to  feel  the  need  of  some  hard 
contact.  She  drew  her  hands  tight  along  the  harsh  knotted 
cord  that  hung  from  her  waist.  She  started  to  her  feet  and 
seized  the  rough  lid  of  the  chest:  there  was  nothing  else  to 
go  in  ?  No.  She  closed  the  lid,  pressing  her  hand  upon  the 
rough  carving,  and  locked  it. 

Then  she  remembered  that  she  had  still  to  complete  her 
equipment  as  a  Pinzochera.  The  large  leather  purse  or 
scarsella,  with  small  coin  in  it,  had  to  be  hung  on  the  cord  at 
her  waist  (her  florins  and  small  jewels,  presents  from  her  god- 
father and  cousin  Brigida,  were  safely  fastened  within  her 
serge  mantle)  —  and  on  the  other  side  must  hang  the  rosary. 

It  did  not  occur  to  Romola,  as  she  hung  that  rosary  by  her 
side,  that  something  else  besides  the  mere  garb  would  perhaps 
be  necessary  to  enable  her  to  pass  as  a  Pinzochera,  and  that 
her  whole  air  and  expression  were  as  little  as  possible  like 
those  of  a  sister  whose  eyelids  were  used  to  be  bent,  and 
whose  lips  were  used  to  move  in  silent  iteration.  Her 
inexperience  prevented  her  from  picturing  distant  details,  and 
it  helped  her  proud  courage  in  shutting  out  any  foreboding 
danger  and  insult.  She  did  not  know  that  any  Florentine 
woman  had  ever  done  exactly  what  she  was  going  to  do : 
unhappy  wives  often  took  refuge  with  their  friends,  or  in  the 
cloister,  she  knew,  but  both  those  courses  were  impossible  to 


296  ROMOLA. 

her ;  she  had  invented  a  lot  for  herself  —  to  go  to  the  most 
learned  woman  in  the  world,  Cassandra  Fedele,  at  Venice,  and 
ask  her  how  an  instructed  woman  could  support  herself  in  a 
lonely  life  there. 

She  was  not  daunted  by  the  practical  difficulties  in  the  way 
or  the  dark  uncertainty  at  the  end.  Her  life  could  never  be 
happy  any  more,  but  it  must  not,  could  not,  be  ignoble.  And 
by  a  pathetic  mixture  of  childish  romance  with  her  woman's 
trials,  the  philosophy  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  this  great 
decisive  deed  of  hers  had  its  place  in  her  imagination  of  the 
future  :  so  far  as  she  conceived  her  solitary  loveless  life  at  all, 
she  saw  it  animated  by  a  proud  stoical  heroism,  and  by  an 
indistinct  but  strong  purpose  of  labor,  that  she  might  be  wise 
enough  to  write  something  which  would  rescue  her  father's 
name  from  oblivion.  After  all  she  was  only  a  young  girl  — 
this  poor  Romola,  who  had  found  herself  at  the  end  of  her 

joys. 

There  were  other  things  yet  to  be  done.  There  was  a  small 
key  in  a  casket  on  the  table  —  but  now  Romola  perceived  that 
her  taper  was  dying  out,  and  she  had  forgotten  to  provide 
herself  with  any  other  light.  In  a  few  moments  the  room 
was  in  total  darkness.  Feeling  her  way  to  the  nearest  chair, 
she  sat  down  to  wait  for  the  morning. 

Her  purpose  in  seeking  the  key  had  called  up  certain 
memories  which  had  come  back  upon  her  during  the  past  week 
with  the  new  vividness  that  remembered  words  always  have 
for  us  when  we  have  learned  to  give  them  a  new  meaning. 
Since  the  shock  of  the  revelation  which  had  seemed  to  divide 
her  forever  from  Tito,  that  last  interview  with  Dino  had  never 
been  for  many  hours  together  out  of  her  mind.  And  it 
solicited  her  all  the  more,  because  while  its  remembered 
images  pressed  upon  her  almost  with  the  imperious  force  of 
sensations,  they  raised  struggling  thoughts  which  resisted 
their  influence.  She  could  not  prevent  herself  from  hearing 
inwardly  the  dying  prophetic  voice  saying  again  and  again,  — 
"The  man  whose  face  was  a  blank  loosed  thy  hand  and 
departed ;  and  as  he  went,  I  could  see  his  face,  and  it  was  the 
face  of  the  great  Tempter.  .  .  .  And  thou,  Romola,  didst 
wring  thy  hands  and  seek  for  water,  and  there  was  none  .  .  . 
and  the  plain  was  bare  and  stony  again,  and  thou  wast  alone 
in  the  midst  of  it.  And  then  it  seemed  that  the  night  fell, 
and  I  saw  no  more."  She  could  not  prevent  herself  from 
dwelling  with  a  sort  of  agonized  fascination  on  the  wasted 
face  ;  on  the  straining  gaze  at  the  crucifix ;  on  the  awe  which 


ARIADNE  DISCROWNS  HERSELF.  297 

had  compelled  her  to  kneel ;  on  the  last  broken  words  and 
then  the  unbroken  silence  —  on  all  the  details  of  the  death- 
scene,  which  had  seemed  like  a  sndden  opening  into  a  world 
apart  from  that  of  her  life-long  knowledge. 

But  her  mind  was  roused  to  resistance  of  impressions  that, 
from  being  obvious  phantoms,  seemed  to  be  getting  solid  in 
the  daylight.  As  a  strong  body  struggles  against  fumes  with 
the  more  violence  when  they  begin  to  be  stifling,  a  strong  soul 
struggles  against  fantasies  with  all  the  more  alarmed  energy 
when  they  threaten  to  govern  in  the  place  of  thought. 

What  had  the  words  of  that  vision  to  do  with  her  real  sor- 
rows ?  That  fitting  of  certain  words  was  a  mere  chance  ;  the 
rest  was  all  vague  —  nay,  those  words  themselves  were  vague  ; 
they  were  determined  by  nothing  but  her  brother's  memories 
and  beliefs.  He  believed  there  was  something  fatal  in  pagan 
learning ;  he  believed  that  celibacy  was  more  holy  than  mar- 
riage ;  he  remembered  their  home,  and  aJl  the  objects  in  the 
library  ;  and  of  these  threads  the  vision  was  woven.  What 
reasonable  warrant  could  she  have  had  for  believing  in  such  a 
vision  and  acting  on  it  ?  None.  True  as  the  voice  of  fore- 
boding had  proved,  Romola  saw  with  unshaken  conviction  that 
to  have  renounced  Tito  in  obedience  to  a  warning  like  that, 
would  have  been  meagre-hearted  folly.  Her  trust  had  been 
delusive,  but  she  would  have  chosen  over  again  to  have  acted 
on  it  rather  than  be  a  creature  led  by  phantoms  and  dis- 
jointed whispers  in  a  world  where  there  was  the  large  music 
of  reasonable  speech,  and  the  warm  grasp  of  living  hands. 

But  the  persistent  presence  of  these  memories,  linking 
themselves  in  her  imagination  with  her  actual  lot,  gave 
her  a  glimpse  of  understanding  into  the  lives  which  had 
before  lain  utterly  aloof  from  her  sympathy  —  the  lives  of 
the  men  and  women  who  were  led  by  such  inward  images  and 
voices. 

"  If  they  were  only  a  little  stronger  in  me,"  she  said  to  her- 
self, "I  should  lose  the  sense  of  what  that  vision  really  was, 
and  take  it  for  a  prophetic  light.  I  might  in  time  get  to  be  a 
seer  of  visions  myself,  like  the  Suora  Maddalena,  and  Camilla 
Eucellai,  and  the  rest." 

Romola  shuddered  at  the  possibility.  All  the  instruction, 
all  the  main  influences  of  her  life  had  gone  to  fortify  her  scorn 
of  that  sickly  superstition  which  led  men  and  women,  with 
eyes  too  weak  for  the  daylight,  to  sit  in  dark  swamps  and  try 
to  read  human  destiny  by  the  chance  flame  of  wandering 
vapors. 


298  ROMOLA. 

And  yet  she  was  conscious  of  something  deeper  than  that 
coincidence  of  words  which  made  the  parting  contact  with  her 
dying  brother  live  anew  in  her  mind,  and  gave  a  new  sister- 
hood to  the  wasted  face.  If  there  were  much  more  of  such 
experience  as  his  in  the  world,  she  would  like  to  understand 
it  —  would  even  like  to  learn  the  thoughts  of  men  who  sank 
in  ecstasy  before  the  pictured  agonies  of  martyrdom.  There 
seemed  to  be  something  more  than  madness  in  that  supreme 
fellowship  with  suffering.  The  springs  were  all  dried  up 
around  her ;  she  wondered  what  other  waters  there  were  at 
which  men  drank  and  found  strength  in  the  desert.  And 
those  moments  in  the  Duomo  when  she  had  sobbed  with  a 
mysterious  mingling  of  rapture  and  pain,  while  Fra  Girolamo 
offered  himself  a  willing  sacrifice  for  the  people,  came  back  to 
her  as  if  they  had  been  a  transient  taste  of  some  such  far-off 
fountain.  But  again  she  shrank  from  impressions  that  were 
alluring  her  within  the  sphere  of  visions  and  narrow  fears 
which  compelled  men  to  outrage  natural  affections  as  Dino  had 
done. 

This  was  the  tangled  web  that  Romola  had  in  her  mind  aa 
she  sat  weary  in  the  darkness.  No  radiant  angel  came  across 
the  gloom  with  a  clear  message  for  her.  In  those  times,  as 
now,  there  were  human  beings  who  never  saw  angels  or  heard 
perfectly  clear  messages.  Such  truth  as  came  to  them  was 
brought  confusedly  in  the  voices  and  deeds  of  men  not  at 
all  like  the  seraphs  of  unfailing  wing  and  piercing  vision  — 
men  who  believed  falsities  as  well  as  truths,  and  did  the  wrong 
as  well  as  the  right.  The  helping  hands  stretched  out  to  them 
were  the  hands  of  men  who  stumbled  and  often  saw  dimly,  so 
that  these  beings  un visited  by  angels  had  no  other  choice  than 
to  grasp  that  stumbling  guidance  along  the  path  of  reliance 
and  action  which  is  the  path  of  life,  or  else  to  pause  in  loneli- 
ness and  disbelief,  which  is  no  path,  but  the  arrest  of  inaction 
and  death. 

And  so  Eomola,  seeing  no  ray  across  the  darkness,  and 
heavy  with  conflict  that  changed  nothing,  sank  at  last  to 
sleep. 


THE   TABERNACLE   UNLOCKED.  299 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

THE  TABERNACLE  UNLOCKED. 

RoMOLA  was  waked  by  a  tap  at  the  door.  The  cold  light  of 
early  morning  was  in  the  room,  and  Maso  was  come  for  the 
travelling-wallet.  The  old  man  could  not  help  starting  when 
she  opened  the  door,  and  showed  him,  instead  of  the  graceful 
outline  he  had  been  used  to,  crowned  with  the  brightness  of 
her  hair,  the  thick  folds  of  the  gray  mantle  and  the  pale  face 
shadowed  by  the  dark  cowl. 

"It  is  well,  Maso,"  said  Romola,  trying  to  speak  in  the 
calmest  voice,  and  make  the  old  man  easy.  "  Here  is  the  wal- 
let quite  ready.  You  will  go  on  quietly,  and  I  shall  not  be 
far  behind  you.  When  you  get  out  of  the  gates  you  may  go 
more  slowly,  for  I  shall  perhaps  join  you  before  you  get  to 
Trespiano." 

She  closed  the  door  behind  him,  and  then  put  her  hand  on 
the  key  which  she  had  taken  from  the  casket  the  last  thing  in 
the  night.  It  was  the  original  key  of  the  little  painted  taber- 
nacle :  Tito  had  forgotten  to  drown  it  in  the  Arno,  and  it  had 
lodged,  as  such  small  things  will,  in  the  corner  of  the  embroid- 
ered scarsella  which  he  wore  with  the  purple  tunic.  One  day, 
long  after  their  marriage,  Romola  had  found  it  there,  and  had 
put  it  by,  without  using  it,  but  with  a  sense  of  satisfaction 
that  the  key  was  within  reach.  The  cabinet  on  which  the 
tabernacle  stood  had  been  moved  to  the  side  of  the  room, 
close  to  one  of  the  windows,  where  the  pale  morning  light  fell 
upon  it  so  as  to  make  the  painted  forms  discernible  enough  to 
Romola,  who  knew  them  well,  —  the  triumphant  Bacchus,  with 
his  clusters  and  his  vine-clad  spear,  clasping  the  crowned 
Ariadne ;  the  Loves  showering  roses,  the  wreathed  vessel,  the 
cunning-eyed  dolphins,  and  the  rippled  sea :  all  encircled  by  a 
flowery  border,  like  a  bower  of  paradise.  Romola  looked  at 
the  familiar  images  with  new  bitterness  and  repulsion:  they 
seemed  a  more  pitiable  mockery  than  ever  on  this  chill  morn- 
ing, when  she  had  waked  up  to  wander  in  loneliness.  They 
had  been  no  tomb   of  sorrow,  but  a   lying   screen.     Foolish 


300  ROMOLA. 

Ariadne  !  with  her  gaze  of  love,  as  if  that  bright  face,  with  its 
hyacinthine  curls  like  tendrils  among  the  vines,  held  the  deep 
secret  of  her  life  ! 

"  Ariadne  is  wonderfully  transformed,"  thought  Romola. 
''  She  would  look  strange  among  the  vines  and  the  roses  now." 

She  took  up  the  mirror,  and  looked  at  herself  once  more. 
But  the  sight  was  so  startling  in  this  morning  light  that  she 
laid  it  down  again,  with  a  sense  of  shrinking  almost  as  strong 
as  that  with  which  she  had  turned  from  the  joyous  Ariadne. 
The  recognition  of  her  own  face,  with  the  cowl  about  it, 
brought  back  the  dread  lest  she  should  be  drawn  at  last  into 
fellowship  with  some  wretched  superstition  —  into  the  com- 
pany of  the  howling  fanatics  and  weeping  nuns  who  had  been 
her  contempt  from  childhood  till  now.  She  thrust  the  key 
into  the  tabernacle  hurriedly :  hurriedly  she  opened  it,  and 
took  out  the  crucifix,  without  looking  at  it ;  then,  with  trem- 
bling fingers,  she  passed  a  cord  through  the  little  ring,  hung 
the  crucifix  round  her  neck,  and  hid  it  in  the  bosom  of  her 
mantle.     "  For  Dino's  sake,"  she  said  to  herself. 

Still  there  were  the  letters  to  be  written  which  Maso  was  to 
carry  back  from  Bologna.  They  were  very  brief.  The  first 
said,  — 

"  Tito,  my  love  for  you  is  dead  ;  and  therefore,  so  far  as  I  was  yours, 
I  too  am  dead.  Do  not  try  to  put  in  force  any  laws  for  the  sake  of 
fetching  me  back:  that  would  bring  you  no  happiness.  The  Romola  you 
married  can  never  return.  I  need  explain  nothing  to  you  after  the  words 
I  uttered  to  you  the  last  time  we  spoke  long  together.  If  you  supposed 
them  to  be  words  of  transient  anger,  you  M'ill  know  now  that  they  were 
the  sign  of  an  irreversible  change. 

"I  think  you  will  fulfil  my  wish  that  my  bridal  chest  should  be  sent 
to  my  godfather,  who  gave  it  me.  It  contains  my  wedding-clothes  and 
the  portraits  and  other  relics  of  my  father  and  mother." 

She  folded  the  ring  inside  this  letter,  and  wrote  Tito's  name 
outside.     The  next  letter  was  to  Bernardo  del  Nero  :  — 

Dearest  Godfather, —  If  I  could  have  been  any  good  to  your  life  by 
staying  I  would  not  have  gone  away  to  a  distance.  But  now  I  am  gone. 
Do  not  ask  the  reason;  and  if  you  love  my  father,  try  to  prevent  any  one 
from  seeking  me.  I  could  not  bear  my  life  in  Florence.  I  cannot  bear 
to  tell  any  one  why.  Help  to  cover  my  lot  in  silence.  I  have  asked  that 
my  bridal  chest  should  be  sent  to  you  :  when  you  open  it,  you  will  know 
the  reason.  Please  to  give  all  the  things  that  were  my  mother's  to  my 
cousin  Brigida,  and  ask  her  to  forgive  me  for  not  saying  any  words  of 
parting  to  her. 

Farewell,  my  second  father.  The  best  thing  I  have  in  life  is  still  to 
remember  your  goodness  and  be  grateful  to  you. 

KOMOLA.. 


THE   TABERNACLE   UNLOCKED.  301 

Romola  put  the  letters,  along  with  the  crucifix,  within  the 
bosom  of  her  mantle,  and  then  felt  that  everything  was  done. 
She  was  ready  now  to  depart. 

No  one  was  stirring  in  the  house,  and  she  went  almost  as 
quietly  as  a  gray  phantom  down  the  stairs  and  into  the  silent 
street.  Her  heart  was  palpitating  violently,  yet  she  enjoyed 
the  sense  of  her  firm  tread  on  the  broad  flags  —  of  the  swift 
movement,  which  was  like  a  chained-up  resolution  set  free  at 
last.  The  anxiety  to  carry  out  her  act,  and  the  dread  of  any 
obstacle,  averted  sorrow ;  and  as  she  reached  the  Ponte 
Rubaconte,  she  felt  less  that  Santa  Croce  was  in  her  sight  thar 
that  the  yellow  streak  of  morning  which  parted  the  gray  was^ 
getting  broader  and  broader,  and  that  unless  she  hastened  hei 
steps,  she  should  have  to  encounter  faces. 

Her  simplest  road  was  to  go  right  on  to  the  Borgo  Pinti, 
and  then  along  by  the  walls  to  the  Porta  San  Gallo,  from 
which  she  must  leave  the  city,  and  this  road  carried  her  by 
the  Piazza  di  Santa  Croce.  But  she  walked  as  steadily  and 
rapidly  as  ever  through  the  piazza,  not  trusting  herself  to 
look  towards  the  church.  The  thought  that  any  eyes  might 
be  turned  on  her  with  a  look  of  curiosity  and  recognition,  and 
that  indifi^erent  minds  might  be  set  speculating  on  her  private 
sorrows,  made  Romola  shrink  physically  as  from  the  imagina- 
tion of  torture.  She  felt  degraded  even  by  that  act  of  her 
husband  from  which  she  was  helplessly  suffering.  But  there 
was  no  sign  that  any  eyes  looked  forth  from  windows  to 
notice  this  tall  gray  sister,  with  the  firm  step,  and  proud  atti- 
tude of  the  cowled  head.  Her  road  lay  aloof  from  the  stir  of 
early  traffic,  and  when  she  reached  the  Porta  San  Gallo,  it  was 
easy  to  pass  while  a  dispute  was  going  forward  about  the  toll  for 
panniers  of  eggs  and  market  produce  which  were  just  entering. 

Out !  Once  past  the  houses  of  the  Borgo,  she  would  be 
beyond  the  last  fringe  of  Florence,  the  sky  would  be  broad 
above  her,  and  she  would  have  entered  on  her  new  life  —  a 
life  of  loneliness  and  endurance,  but  of  freedom.  She  had 
been  strong  enough  to  snap  asunder  the  bonds  she  had  ac- 
cepted in  blind  faith :  whatever  befell  her,  she  would  no 
more  feel  the  breath  of  soft  hated  lips  warm  upon  her  cheek, 
no  longer  feel  the  breath  of  an  odious  mind  stifling  her  own. 
The  bare  wintry  morning,  the  chill  air,  were  welcome  in  their 
severity :  the  leafless  trees,  the  sombre  hills,  were  not 
haunted  by  the  gods  of  beauty  and  joy,  whose  worship  she 
had  forsaken  forever. 

But  presently  the  light  burst  forth  with  sudden  strength, 


302  ROMOLA. 

and  shadows  were  thrown  across  the  road.  It  seemed  that 
the  sun  was  going  to  chase  away  the  gray n ess.  The 
light  is  perhaps  never  felt  more  strongly  as  a  divine 
presence  stirring  all  those  inarticulate  sensibilities  which 
are  our  deepest  life,  than  in  these  moments  when  it  in- 
stantaneously awakens  the  shadows.  A  certain  awe  which 
inevitably  accompanied  this  most  momentous  act  of  her  life 
became  a  more  conscious  element  in  Komola's  feeling  as  she 
found  herself  in  the  sudden  presence  of  the  impalpable 
golden  glory  and  the  long  shadow  of  herself  that  was  not  to 
be  escaped.  Hitherto  she  had  met  no  one  but  an  occasional 
contadino  with  mules,  and  the  many  turnings  of  the  road  on 
the  level  prevented  her  from  seeing  that  Maso  was  not  very 
far  ahead  of  her.  But  when  she  had  passed  Pietra  and  was 
on  rising  ground,  she  lifted  up  the  hanging  roof  of  her  cowl 
and  looked  eagerly  before  her. 

The  cowl  was  dropped  again  immediately.  She  had  seen, 
not  Maso,  but  —  two  monks,  who  were  approaching  within  a 
few  yards  of  her.  The  edge  of  her  cowl  making  a  pent-house 
on  her  brow  had  shut  out  the  objects  above  the  level  of  her 
eyes,  and  for  the  last  few  moments  she  had  been  looking  at 
nothing  but  the  brightness  on  the  path  and  at  her  own 
shadow,  tall  and  shrouded  like  a  dread  spectre. 

She  wished  noAv  that  she  had  not  looked  up.  Her  disguise 
made  her  especially  dislike  to  encounter  monks :  they  might 
expect  some  pious  passwords  of  which  she  knew  nothing,  and 
she  walked  along  with  a  careful  appearance  of  unconscious- 
ness till  she  had  seen  the  skirts  of  the  b]ack  mantles  pass  by 
her.  The  encounter  had  made  her  heart  beat  disagreeably,  for 
Eomola  had  an  uneasiness  in  her  religious  disguise,  a  shame 
at  this  studied  concealment,  which  was  made  more  distinct  by 
a  special  effort  to  appear  unconscious  under  actual  glances. 

But  the  black  skirts  would  be  gone  the  faster  because  they 
were  going  down-hill ;  and  seeing  a  great  flat  stone  against  a 
cypress  that  rose  from  a  projecting  green  bank,  she  yielded  to 
the  desire  which  the  slight  shock  had  given  her,  to  sit  down 
and  rest. 

She  turned  her  back  on  Florence,  not  meaning  to  look  at  it 
till  the  monks  were  quite  oiit  of  sight;  and  raising  the  edge 
of  her  cowl  again  when  she  had  seated  herself,  she  discerned 
Maso  and  the  mules  at  a  distance  where  it  was  not  hopeless 
for  her  to  overtake  them,  as  the  old  man  would  probably 
linger  in  expectation  of  her. 

Meanwhile  she  might  pause  a  little.     She  was  free  and  alona 


THE  BLACK  MARKS  BECOME  MAGICAL.        303 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

THE    BLACK    MARKS    BECOME    MAGICAL. 

That  journey  of  Tito's  to  Rome,  which  had  removed  many 
difficulties  from  Romola's  departure,  had  been  resolved  on 
quite  suddenly,  at  a  supper,  only  the  evening  before. 

Tito  had  set  out  towards  that  supper  with  agreeable  expec- 
tations. The  meats  were  likely  to  be  delicate,  the  wines 
choice,  the  company  distinguished ;  for  the  place  of  entertain- 
ment was  the  Selva  or  Orto  de'  Rucellai,  or,  as  we  should  say, 
the  Rucellai  Gardens ;  and  the  host,  Bernardo  Rucellai,  was 
quite  a  typical  Florentine  grandee.  Even  his  family  name 
has  a  significance  which  is  prettily  symbolic :  properly  un- 
derstood, it  may  bring  before  us  a  little  lichen,  popularly 
named  orcella  or  roccella,  w^hich  grows  on  the  rocks  of  Greek 
isles  and  in  the  Canaries ;  and  having  drunk  a  great  deal  of 
light  into  its  little  stems  and  button-heads,  will,  under  certain 
circumstances,  give  it  out  again  as  a  reddish  purple  dye,  very 
grateful  to  the  eyes  of  men.  By  bringing  the  excellent 
secret  of  this  dye,  called  oricello,  from  the  Levant  to  Florence, 
a  certain  merchant,  who  lived  nearly  a  hundred  years  before 
our  Bernardo's  time,  won  for  himself  and  his  descendants 
much  wealth,  and  the  pleasantly  suggestive  surname  of  Ori- 
cellari,  or  Roccellari,  which  on  Tuscan  tongues  speedily 
became  Rucellai. 

And  our  Bernardo,  who  stands  out  more  prominently  than 
the  rest  on  this  purple  background,  had  added  all  sorts  of 
distinction  to  the  family  name  :  he  had  married  the  sister  of 
Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  and  had  had  the  most  splendid  wedding 
in  the  memory  of  Florentine  upholstery ;  and  for  these  and 
other  virtues  he  had  been  sent  on  embassies  to  France  and 
Venice,  and  had  been  chosen  Gonfaloniere ;  he  had  not  only 
built  himself  a  fine  palace,  but  had  finished  putting  the  black 
and  white  marble  fagade  to  the  church  of  Santa  INIaria  Novella  ; 
he  had  planted  a  garden  with  rare  trees,  and  had  made  it  classic 
ground  by  receiving  within  it  the  meetings  of  the  Platonic 
Academy,  orphaned  by  the  death  of  Lorenzo  ;  he  had  written 
an  excellent,  learned  book,  of  a  new  topographical  sort,  about 


304  ROMOLA. 

ancient  Rome ;  he  had  collected  antiquities ;  he  had  a  pure 
Latinity.  The  simplest  account  of  him,  one  sees,  reads  like 
a  laudatory  epitaph,  at  the  end  of  which  the  Greek  and 
Ausonian  Muses  might  be  confidently  requested  to  tear  their 
hair,  and  Nature  to  desist  from  any  second  attempt  to  com- 
bine so  many  virtues  with  one  set  of  viscera. 

His  invitation  had  been  conveyed  to  Tito  through  Lorenzo 
Tornabuoni,  with  an  emphasis  which  would  have  suggested 
that  the  object  of  the  gathering  was  political,  even  if  the 
public  questions  of  the  time  had  been  less  absorbing.  As  it 
was,  Tito  felt  sure  that  some  party  purposes  were  to  be 
furthered  by  the  excellent  flavors  of  stewed  fish  and  old 
Greek  wine ;  for  Bernardo  Rucellai  was  not  simply  an  influ- 
ential personage,  he  was  one  of  the  elect  Twenty  who  for 
three  weeks  had  held  the  reins  of  Florence.  This  assurance 
put  Tito  in  the  best  spirits  as  he  made  his  way  to  the  Via 
della  Scala,  where  the  classic  garden  was  to  be  found:  without 
it,  he  might  have  had  some  uneasy  speculation  as  to  whether 
the  high  company  he  would  have  the  honor  of  meeting  was 
likely  to  be  dull  as  well  as  distinguished ;  for  he  had  had 
experience  of  various  dull  suppers  even  in  the  Rucellai  gar' 
dens,  and  especially  of  the  dull  philosophic  sort,  wherein  he 
had  not  only  been  called  upon  to  accept  an  entire  scheme  of 
the  universe  (which  would  have  been  easy  to  him),  but  to 
listen  to  an  exposition  of  the  same,  from  the  origin  of  things 
to  their  complete  ripeness  in  the  tractate  of  the  philosopher 
then  speaking. 

It  was  a  dark  evening,  and  it  was  only  when  Tito  crossed 
the  occasional  light  of  a  lamp  suspended  before  an  image  of 
the  Virgin,  that  the  outline  of  his  figure  was  discernible 
enough  for  recognition.  At  such  moments  any  one  caring  to 
watch  his  passage  from  one  of  these  lights  to  another  might 
have  observed  that  the  tall  and  graceful  personage  with  the 
mantle  folded  round  him  was  followed  constantly  by  a  very 
different  form,  thick-set  and  elderly,  in  a  serge  tunic  and  felt 
hat.  The  conjunction  might  have  been  taken  for  mere  chance, 
since  there  were  many  passengers  along  the  streets  at  this 
hour.  But  when  Tito  stopped  at  the  gate  of  the  Rucellai 
gardens,  the  figure  behind  stopped  too.  The  sportello,  or 
smaller  door  of  the  gate,  was  already  being  held  open  by  the 
servant,  who,  in  the  distraction  of  attending  to  some  question, 
had  not  yet  closed  it  since  the  last  arrival,  and  Tito  turned  in 
rapidly,  giving  his  name  to  the  servant,  and  passing  on  be- 
tween the  evergreen  bushes  that  shone  like  metal  in  the 
torchlight.     The  follower  turned  in  too. 


THE  BLACK  MARKS  BECOME  MAGICAL.        305 

"  Your  name  ?  "  said  the  servant. 

"  Baldassarre  Calvo,"  was  the  immediate  answer. 

"You  are  not  a  guest;  the  guests  have  all  passed." 

"  I  belong  to  Tito  Melema,  who  has  just  gone  in.  I  am  ti 
wait  in  the  gardens." 

The  servant  hesitated.  "  I  had  orders  to  admit  only  guests. 
Are  you  a  servant  of  Messer  Tito  ?  " 

"No,  friend,  I  am  not  a  servant;  I  am  a  scholar." 

There  are  men  to  whom  you  need  only  say,  "  I  am  a 
buffalo,"  in  a  certain  tone  of  quiet  confidence,  and  thej^  will 
let  you  pass.  The  porter  gave  way  at  once,  Baldassarre 
entered,  and  heard  the  door  closed  and  chained  behind  him, 
as  he  too  disappeared  among  the  shining  bushes. 

Those  ready  and  firm  answers  argued  a  great  change  in 
Baldassarre  since  the  last  meeting  face  to  face  with  Tito, 
when  the  dagger  broke  in  two.  The  change  had  declared 
itself  in  a  startling  way. 

At  the  moment  when  the  shadow  of  Tito  passed  in  front  of 
the  hovel  as  he  departed  homeward,  Baldassarre  was  sitting 
in  that  state  of  after-tremor  known  to  every  one  who  is  liable 
to  great  outbursts  of  passion :  a  state  in  which  physical 
powerlessness  is  sometimes  accompanied  by  an  exceptional 
lucidity  of  thought,  as  if  that  disengagement  of  excited 
passion  had  carried  away  a  fire-mist  and  left  clearness  behind 
it.  He  felt  unable  to  rise  and  walk  away  just  yet;  his  limbs 
seemed  benumbed;  he  was  cold,  and  his  hands  shook.  But  in 
that  bodily  helplessness  he  sat  surrounded,  not  by  the  habitual 
dimness  and  vanishing  shadows,  but  by  the  clear  images  of 
the  past ;  he  was  living  again  in  an  unbroken  course  through 
that  life  which  seemed  a  long  preparation  for  the  taste  of 
bitterness. 

For  some  minutes  he  was  too  thoroughly  absorbed  by  the 
images  to  reflect  on  the  fact  that  he  saw  them,  and  note  the 
fact  as  a  change.  But  when  that  sudden  clearness  had 
travelled  through  the  distance,  and  came  at  last  to  rest  on 
the  scene  just  gone  by,  he  felt  fully  where  he  was:  he 
remembered  Monna  Lisa  and  Tessa.  Ah !  he  then  was  the 
mysterious  husband;  he  who  had  another  wife  in  the  Via 
de'  Bardi.  It  was  time  to  pick  up  the  broken  dagger  and  go 
—  go  and  leave  no  trace  of  himself ;  for  to  hide  his  feebleness 
seemed  the  thing  most  like  power  that  was  left  to  him.  He 
leaned  to  take  up  the  fragments  of  the  dagger;  then  he 
turned  towards  the  book  which  lay  open  at  his  side.  It  was 
a  fine  large  manuscript,  an  odd  volume  of  Pausanias.     The 


306  ROM  OLA. 

moonlight  was  upon  it,  and  he  couhl  see  the  large  letters  at 
the  head  of  the  page  :  — 

MES2HNIKA.     KB'. 

In  old  days  he  had  known  Pausanias  familiarly;  yet  an 
hour  or  two  ago  he  had  been  looking  hopelessly  at  that  page, 
and  it  had  suggested  no  more  meaning  to  him  than  if  the 
letters  had  been  black  weather-marks  on  a  wall ;  but  at  this 
moment  they  were  once  more  the  magic  signs  that  conjure  up 
a  world.  That  moonbeam  falling  on  the  letters  had  raised 
Messenia  before  him,  and  its  struggle  against  the  Spartan 
oppression. 

He  snatched  up  the  book,  but  the  light  was  too  pale  for 
him  to  read  further  by.  No  matter :  he  knew  that  chapter ; 
he  read  inwardly.  He  saw  the  stoning  of  the  traitor  Aristo- 
crates  —  stoned  by  a  whole  people,  who  cast  him  out  from 
their  borders  to  lie  unburied,  and  set  up  a  pillar  with  verses 
upon  it  telling  how  Time  had  brought  home  justice  to  the 
unjust.  The  words  arose  within  him,  and  stirred  innumerable 
vibrations  of  memory.  He  forgot  that  he  was  old ;  he  could 
almost  have  shouted.  The  light  was  come  again,  mother  of 
knowledge  and  joy !  In  that  exultation  his  limbs  recovered 
their  strength :  he  started  up  with  his  broken  dagger  and 
book,  and  went  out  under  the  broad  moonlight. 

It  was  a  nipping  frosty  air,  but  Baldassarre  could  feel  no 
chill  —  he  only  felt  the  glow  of  conscious  power.  He  walked 
about  and  paused  on  all  the  open  spots  of  that  high  ground, 
and  looked  down  on  the  domed  and  towered  city,  sleeping 
darkly  under  its  sleeping  guardians,  the  mountains ;  on  the 
pale  gleam  of  the  river ;  on  the  valley  vanishing  towards  the 
peaks  of  snow ;  and  felt  himself  master  of  them  all. 

That  sense  of  mental  empire  which  belongs  to  us  all  in 
moments  of  exceptional  clearness  was  intensified  for  him  by 
the  long  days  and  nights  in  which  memory  had  been  little 
more  than  the  consciousness  of  something  gone.  That  city, 
which  had  been  a  weary  labyrinth,  was  material  that  he  could 
subdue  to  his  purposes  now :  his  mind  glanced  through  its 
affairs  with  flashing  conjecture  ;  he  was  once  more  a  man  who 
knew  cities,  whose  sense  of  vision  was  instructed  with  large 
experience,  and  who  felt  the  keen  delight  of  holding  all 
things  in  the  grasp  of  language.  Names !  Images !  —  his 
mind  rushed  through  its  wealth  without  pausing,  like  one 
who  enters  on  a  great  inheritance. 


THE   BLACK  MARKS   BECOME  MAGICAL.  307 

But  amidst  all  tliat  rushing  eagerness  there  was  one  End 
presiding  in  Baldassarre's  consciousness,  —  a  dark  deity  in  the 
inmost  cell,  who  only  seemed  forgotten  while  his  hecatomb 
was  being  prepared.  And  when  the  first  triumph  in  the 
certainty  of  recovered  power  had  had  its  way,  his  thoughts 
centred  themselves  on  Tito.  That  fair,  slippery  viper  could 
not  escape  him  now;  thanks  to  struggling  justice,  the  heart 
that  never  quivered  with  tenderness  for  another  had  its 
sensitive  selfish  fibres  that  could  be  reached  by  the  sharp 
point  of  anguish.  The  soul  that  bowed  to  no  right,  bowed  to 
the  great  lord  of  mortals,  Pain. 

He  could  search  into  every  secret  of  Tito's  life  now  :  he 
knew  some  of  the  secrets  already,  and  the  failure  of  the 
broken  dagger,  which  seemed  like  frustration,  had  been  the 
beginning  of  achievement.  Doubtless  that  sudden  rage  had 
shaken  away  the  obstruction  which  stifled  his  soul.  Twice 
before,  when  his  memory  had  partially  returned,  it  had  been 
in  consequence  of  sudden  excitation :  once  when  he  had  had 
to  defend  himself  from  an  enraged  dog :  once  when  he  had 
been  overtaken  by  the  waves,  and  had  to  scramble  up  a  rock 
to  save  himself. 

Yes,  but  if  this  time,  as  then,  the  light  were  to  die  out,  and 
the  dreary  conscious  blank  come  back  again !  This  time  the 
light  was  stronger  and  steadier ;  but  what  security  was  there 
that  before  the  morrow  the  dark  fog  would  not  be  round  him 
again  ?  Even  the  fear  seemed  like  the  beginning  of  feeble- 
ness :  he  thought  with  alarm  that  he  might  sink  the  faster 
for  this  excited  vigil  of  his  on  the  hill,  which  was  expending 
his  force ;  and  after  seeking  anxiously  for  a  sheltered  corner 
where  he  might  lie  down,  he  nestled  at  last  against  a  heap  of 
warm  garden  straw,  and  so  fell  asleep. 

When  he  opened  his  eyes  again  it  was  daylight.  The  first 
moments  were  filled  with  strange  bewilderment ;  he  was  a 
man  with  a  double  identity ;  to  which  had  he  awaked  ?  to 
the  life  of  dim-sighted  sensibilities  like  the  sad  heirship  of 
some  fallen  greatness,  or  to  the  life  of  recovered  power  ? 
Surely  the  last,  for  the  events  of  the  night  all  came  back  to 
him  :  the  recognition  of  the  page  in  Pausanias,  the  crowding 
resurgence  of  facts  and  names,  the  sudden  wide  prospect 
which  had  given  him  such  a  moment  as  that  of  the  Maenad  in 
the  glorious  amaze  of  her  morning  waking  on  the  mountain 
top. 

He  took  up  the  book  again,  he  read,  he  remembered  with- 
out reading.     He  saw  a  name,  and  the  images  of  deeds  rose 


308  ROMOLA. 

with  it :  he  saw  the  mention  of  a  deed,  and  he  linked  it  with 
a  name.  There  were  stories  of  inexpiable  crimes,  but  stories 
also  of  guilt  that  seemed  successful.  There  were  sanctuaries 
for  swift-footed  miscreants :  baseness  had  its  armor,  and  the 
weapons  of  justice  sometimes  broke  against  it.  What  then  ? 
If  baseness  triumphed  everywhere  else,  if  it  could  heap  to 
itself  all  the  goods  of  the  world  and  even  hold  the  keys  of 
hell,  it  would  never  triumph  over  the  hatred  which  it  had 
itself  awakened.  It  could  devise  no  torture  that  would  seem 
greater  than  the  torture  of  submitting  to  its  smile.  Baldas- 
sarre  felt  the  indestructible,  independent  force  of  a  supreme 
emotion,  which  knows  no  terror,  and  asks  for  no  motive, 
which  is  itself  an  ever-burning  motive,  consuming  all  other 
desire.  And  now  in  this  morning  light,  when  the  assurance 
came  again  that  the  fine  fibres  of  association  were  active  still 
and  that  his  recovered  self  had  not  departed,  all  his  gladness 
was  bvit  the  hope  of  vengeance. 

From  that  time  till  the  evening  on  which  we  have  seen  him 
enter  the  Rucellai  gardens,  he  had  been  incessantly,  but 
cautiously,  inquiring  into  Tito's  position  and  all  his  circum- 
stances, and  there  was  hardly  a  day  on  which  he  did  not 
contrive  to  follow  his  movements.  But  he  wished  not  to 
arouse  any  alarm  in  Tito :  he  wished  to  secure  a  moment 
when  the  hated  favorite  of  blind  fortune  was  at  the  summit 
of  confident  ease,  surrounded  by  chief  men  on  whose  favor 
he  depended.  It  was  not  any  retributive  payment  or  recog- 
nition of  himself  for  his  own  behoof,  on  which  Baldassarre's 
whole  soul  was  bent :  it  was  to  find  the  sharpest  edge  of 
disgrace  and  shame  by  which  a  selfish  smiler  could  be 
pierced ;  it  was  to  send  through  his  marrow  the  most  sudden 
shock  of  dread.  He  was  content  to  lie  hard,  and  live  stintedly 
—  he  had  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  remaining  money  in 
buying  another  poniard :  his  hunger  and  his  thirst  were 
after  nothing  exquisite  but  an  exquisite  vengeance.  He  had 
avoided  addressing  himself  to  any  one  whom  he  suspected  of 
intimacy  with  Tito,  lest  an  alarm  raised  in  Tito's  mind 
should  urge  him  either  to  flight  or  to  some  other  counteract- 
ing measure  which  hard-pressed  ingenuity  might  devise.  For 
this  reason  he  had  never  entered  Nello's  shop,  which  he 
observed  that  Tito  frequented,  and  he  had  turned  aside  to 
avoid  meeting  Piero  di  Cosimo. 

The  possibility  of  frustration  gave  added  eagerness  to  his 
desire  that  the  great  opportunity  he  sought  should  not  be 
deferred.     The  desire  was  eager  in  him  on  another  ground ;  he 


A   SUPPER   IN   THE  RUCELLAI   GARDENS.      309 

trembled  lest  his  memory  should  go  again.  Whether  from  the 
agitating  presence  of  that  fear,  or  from  some  other  causes,  he 
had  twice  felt  a  sort  of  mental  dizziness,  in  which  the  inward 
sense  or  imagination  seemed  to  be  losing  the  distinct  forms  of 
things.  Once  he  had  attempted  to  enter  the  Palazzo  Vecchio 
and  make  his  way  into  a  council-chamber  where  Tito  was,  and 
had  failed.  But  now,  on  this  evening,  he  felt  that  his  occasion 
was  come. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

A    SUPPER    IN    THE   RUCELLAI    GARDENS. 

On  entering  the  handsome  pavilion,  Tito's  quick  glance  soon 
discerned  in  the  selection  of  the  guests  the  confirmation  of 
his  conjecture  that  the  object  of  the  gathering  was  political, 
though,  perhaps,  nothing  more  distinct  than  that  strengthen- 
ing of  party  which  comes  from  good-fellowship.  Good  dishes 
and  good  wine  were  at  that  time  believed  to  heighten  the 
consciousness  of  political  preferences,  and  in  the  inspired  ease 
of  after-supper  talk  it  was  supposed  that  people  ascertained 
their  own  opinions  with  a  clearness  quite  inaccessible  to  unin- 
vited stomachs.  The  Florentines  were  a  sober  and  frugal 
people;  but  wherever  men  have  gathered  wealth,  Madonna 
della  Gozzoviglia  and  San  Buonvino  have  had  their  worship- 
pers ;  and  the  Rucellai  were  among  the  few  Florentine  fami- 
lies who  kept  a  great  table  and  lived  splendidly.  It  was  not 
probable  that  on  this  evening  there  would  be  any  attempt  to 
apply  high  philosophic  theories  ;  and  there  could  be  no  ob- 
jection to  the  bust  of  Plato  looking  on,  or  even  to  the  modest 
presence  of  the  cardinal  virtues  in  fresco  on  the  walls. 

That  bust  of  Plato  had  been  long  used  to  look  down  on  con- 
viviality of  a  more  transcendental  sort,  for  it  had  been  brought 
from  Lorenzo's  villa  after  his  death,  when  the  meetings  of  the 
Platonic  Academy  had  been  transferred  to  these  gardens. 
Especially  on  every  thirteenth  of  November,  reputed  anniver- 
sary of  Plato's  death,  it  had  looked  down  from  under  laurel 
leaves  on  a  picked  company  of  scholars  and  philosophers,  who 
met  to  eat  and  drink  with  moderation,  and  to  discuss  and 
admire,  perhaps  with  less  moderation,  the  doctrines  of  the 
great  master :  —  on  Pico  della  Mirandola,  once  a  Quixotic 
young  genius  with  long  curls,  astonished  at  his  own  powers 


310  ROMOLA. 

and  astonishing  Rome  with  heterodox  theses ;  afterwards  a 
more  humble  student  with  a  consuming  passion  for  inward 
perfection,  having  come  to  find  the  univorse  more  astonishing 
than  his  own  cleverness :  —  on  innocent,  laborious  Marsilio 
Ficino,  picked  out  young  to  be  reared  as  a  Platonic  philoso- 
pher, and  fed  on  Platonism  in  all  its  stages  till  his  mind  was 
perhaps  a  little  pulpy  from  that  too  exclusive  diet :  —  on 
Angelo  Poliziano,  chief  literary  genius  of  that  age,  a  born 
poet,  and  a  scholar  without  dulness,  whose  phrases  had  blood 
in  them  and  are  alive  still :  —  or,  further  back,  on  Leon  Bat- 
tista  Alberti,  a  reverend  senior  when  those  three  were  young, 
and  of  a  much  grander  type  than  they,  a  robust,  universal 
mind,  at  once  practical  and  theoretic,  artist,  man  of  science, 
inventor,  poet :  —  and  on  many  more  valiant  workers  whose 
names  are  not  registered  where  every  day  we  turn  the  leaf  to 
read  them,  but  whose  labors  make  a  part,  though  an  unrecog- 
nized part,  of  our  inheritance,  like  the  ploughing  and  sowing 
of  past  generations. 

Bernardo  Rucellai  was  a  man  to  hold  a  distinguished  place 
in  that  Academy  even  before  he  became  its  host  and  patron. 
He  was  still  in  the  prime  of  life,  not  more  than  four  and  forty, 
with  a  somewhat  haughty,  cautiously  dignified  presence ;  con- 
scious of  an  amazingly  pure  Latinity,  but,  says  Erasmus,  not 
to  be  caught  speaking  Latin  —  no  word  of  Latin  to  be  sheared 
off  him  by  the  sharpest  of  Teutons.  He  welcomed  Tito  with 
more  marked  favor  than  usual  and  gave  him  a  place  between 
Lorenzo  Tornabuoni  and  Giannozzo  Pucci,  both  of  them  ac- 
complished young  members  of  the  Medicean  party. 

Of  course  the  talk  was  the  lightest  in  the  world  while  the 
brass  bowl  filled  with  scented  water  was  passing  round,  that 
the  company  might  wash  their  hands,  and  rings  flashed  on 
white  fingers  under  the  wax-lights,  and  there  was  the  pleasant 
fragrance  of  fresh  white  damask  newly  come  from  France. 
The  tone  of  remark  was  a  very  common  one  in  those  times. 
Some  one  asked  what  Dante's  pattern  old  Florentine  would 
think  if  the  life  could  come  into  him  again  under  his  leathern 
belt  and  bone  clasp,  and  he  could  see  silver  forks  on  the 
table  ?  And  it  was  agreed  on  all  hands  that  the  habits  of 
posterity  would  be  very  surprising  to  ancestors,  if  ancestors 
could  only  know  them. 

And  while  the  silver  forks  were  just  dallying  with  the 
appetizing  delicacies  that  introduced  the  more  serious  business 
of  the  supper  —  such  as  morsels  of  liver,  cooked  to  that  ex- 
quisite point  that  they  would  melt  in  the  mouth  —  there  was 


A   SUPPER  IN  THE  RU  CELL  A I  GARDENS.      311 

time  to  admire  the  designs  on  the  enamelled  silver  centres  of 
the  brass  service,  and  to  say  something,  as  usual,  about  the 
silver  dish  for  confetti,  a  masterpiece  of  Antonio  Pollajuolo, 
whom  patronizing  Popes  had  seduced  from  his  native  Florence 
to  more  gorgeous  Rome. 

"  Ah,  I  remember,"  said  Niccolo  Ridolfi,  a  middle-aged  man, 
with  that  negligent  ease  of  manner  which,  seeming  to  claim 
nothing,  is  really  based  on  the  life-long  consciousness  of  com- 
manding rank  —  "I  remember  our  Antonio  getting  bitter  about 
his  chiselling  and  enamelling  of  these  metal  things,  and  taking 
in  a  fury  to  painting,  because,  said  he,  '  the  artist  who  puts 
his  work  into  gold  and  silver,  puts  his  brains  into  the  melting- 
pot.'  " 

"  And  that  is  not  unlikely  to  be  a  true  foreboding  of  Anto- 
nio's," said  Giannozzo  Pucci.  "If  this  pretty  war  with  Pisa 
goes  on,  and  the  revolt  only  spreads  a  little  to  our  other  towns, 
it  is  not  only  our  silver  dishes  that  are  likely  to  go  ;  I  doubt 
whether  Antonio'3  silver  saints  round  the  altar  of  San  Gio- 
vanni will  not  some  day  vanish  from  the  eyes  of  the  faithful 
to  be  worshipped  more  devoutly  in  the  form  of  coin." 

"The  Prate  is  preparing  us  for  that  already,"  said  Torna- 
buoni.  "He  is  telling  the  people  that  God  will  not  have  silver 
crucifixes  and  starving  stomachs  ;  and  that  the  church  is  best 
adorned  with  the  gems  of  holiness  and  the  fine  gold  of 
brotherly  love." 

"  A  very  useful  doctrine  of  war-finance,  as  many  a  Condot- 
tiere  has  found,"  said  Bernardo  Rucellai,  dryly.  "  But  politics 
come  on  after  the  confetti,  Lorenzo,  when  we  can  drink  wine 
enough  to  wash  them  down ;  they  are  too  solid  to  be  taken 
with  roast  and  boiled." 

"Yes,  indeed,"  said  Niccolo  Ridolfi.  "Our  Luigi  Pulci 
would  have  said  this  delicate  boiled  kid  must  be  eaten  with  an 
impartial  mind.  I  remember  one  day  at  Careggi,  when  Luigi 
was  in  his  rattling  vein,  he  was  maintaining  that  nothing  per- 
verted the  palate  like  opinion.  'Opinion,'  said  he,  *  corrupts 
the  saliva  —  that's  why  men  took  to  pepper.  Scepticism  is 
the  only  philosophy  that  doesn't  bring  a  taste  in  the  mouth.' 
'  Nay,'  says  poor  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  'you  must  be  out  there, 
Luigi.  Here  is  this  untainted  sceptic,  Matteo  Franco,  who 
wants  hotter  sauce  than  any  of  us.'  '  Because  he  has  a  strong 
opinion  of  himself,'  flashes  out  Luigi,  '  which  is  the  original 
egg  of  all  other  opinion.  Be  a  sceptic  ?  He  believes  in  the 
immortality  of  his  own  verses.  He  is  such  a  logician  as  that 
preaching  friar  who  described  the  pavement  of  the  bottomless 


312  ROMOLA. 

pit.'     Poor  Luigi !  Ms  mind  was  like  sharpest  steel  that  can 
touch  nothing  without  cutting." 

"  And  yet  a  very  gentle-hearted  creature,"  said  Giannozzo 
Pucci.  "  It  seemed  to  me  his  talk  was  a  mere  blowing  of  soap- 
bubbles.  What  dithyrambs  he  went  into  about  eating  and 
drinking !  and  yet  he  was  as  temperate  as  a  butterfly." 

The  light  talk  and  the  solid  eatables  were  not  soon  at  an 
end,  for  after  the  roast  and  boiled  meats  came  the  indispens- 
able capon  and  game,  and,  crowning  glory  of  a  well-spread 
table,  a  peacock  cooked  according  to  the  receipt  of  Apicius 
for  cooking  partridges,  namely,  with  the  feathers  on,  but  not 
plucked  afterwards,  as  that  great  authority  ordered  concerning 
his  partridges  ;  on  the  contrary,  so  disposed  on  the  dish  that 
it  might  look  as  much  as  possible  like  a  live  peacock  taking  its 
unboiled  repose.  Great  was  the  skill  required  in  that  confi- 
dential servant  who  was  the  official  carver,  respectfully  to 
turn  the  classical  though  insipid  bird  on  its  back,  and  expose 
the  plucked  breast  from  which  he  was  to  dispense  a  delicate 
slice  to  each  of  the  honorable  company,  unless  any  one  should 
be  of  so  independent  a  mind  as  to  decline  that  expensivn 
toughness  and  prefer  the  vulgar  digestibility  of  capon. 

Hardly  any  one  was  so  bold.  Tito  quoted  Horace  and  dis 
persed  his  slice  in  small  particles  over  his  plate ;  Bernardo 
Rucellai  made  a  learned  observation  about  the  ancient  price  of 
peacocks'  eggs,  but  did  not  pretend  to  eat  his  slice;  and 
ISTiccolo  Ridolfi  held  a  mouthful  on  his  fork  while  he  told  a 
favorite  story  of  Luigi  Pulci's,  about  a  man  of  Siena,  who, 
wanting  to  give  a  splendid  entertainment  at  moderate  expense, 
bought  a  wild  goose,  cut  off  its  beak  and  webbed  feet,  and 
boiled  it  in  its  feathers,  to  pass  for  a  pea-hen. 

In  fact,  very  little  peacock  was  eaten ;  but  there  was  the 
satisfaction  of  sitting  at  a  table  where  peacock  was  served  up 
in  a  remarkable  manner,  and  of  knowing  that  such  caprices 
were  not  within  reach  of  any  but  those  who  supped  with  the 
very  wealthiest  men.  And  it  would  have  been  rashness  to 
speak  slightingly  of  peacock's  flesh,  or  any  other  venerable 
institution,  at  a  time  when  Fra  Girolamo  was  teaching  the  dis- 
turbing doctrine  that  it  was  not  the  duty  of  the  rich  to  be 
luxurious  for  the  sake  of  the  poor. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  chill  obscurity  that  surrounded  this 
centre  of  warmth,  and  light,  and  savory  odors,  the  lonel}'-  dis- 
owned man  was  walking  in  gradually  narrowing  circuits.  He 
paused  among  the  trees,  and  looked  in  at  the  windows,  which 
made  brilliant  pictures  against  the  gloom.     He  could  hear  the 


A   SUPPER   IN  THE  RUCELLAI  GARDENS.      313 

laughter  ;  he  could  see  Tito  gesticulating  with  careless  grace, 
and  hear  his  voice,  now  alone,  now  mingled  in  the  merry  con- 
fusion of  interlacing  speeches.  Baldassarre's  mind  was  highly 
strung.  He  was  preparing  himself  for  the  moment  when  he 
could  win  his  entrance  into  this  brilliant  company ;  and  he 
had  a  savage  satisfaction  in  the  sight  of  Tito's  easy  gayety, 
which  seemed  to  be  preparing  the  unconscious  victim  for  more 
effective  torture. 

But  the  men  seated  among  the  branching  tapers  and  the 
flashing  cups  could  know  nothing  of  the  pale  fierce  face  that 
watched  them  from  without.  The  light  can  be  a  curtain  as 
well  as  the  darkness. 

And  the  talk  went  on  with  more  eagerness  as  it  became  less 
disconnected  and  trivial.  The  sense  of  citizenship  was  just 
then  strongly  forced  even  on  the  most  indifferent  minds. 
What  the  overmastering  Fra  Girolamo  was  saying  and  prompt- 
ing was  really  uppermost  in  the  thoughts  of  every  one  at  table  ; 
and  before  the  stewed  fish  was  removed,  and  while  the  favor- 
ite sweets  were  yet  to  come,  his  name  rose  to  the  surface  of 
the  conversation,  and,  in  spite  of  Rucellai's  previous  prohibi- 
tion, the  talk  again  became  political.  At  first,  while  the  ser- 
vants remained  present,  it  was  mere  gossip :  what  had  been 
done  in  the  Palazzo  on  the  first  day's  voting  for  the  Great 
Council ;  how  hot-tempered  and  domineering  Francesco  Valori 
was,  as  if  he  were  to  have  everything  his  own  way  by  right 
of  his  austere  virtue  ;  and  how  it  was  clear  to  everybody  who 
heard  Soderini's  speeches  in  favor  of  the  Great  Council  and 
also  heard  the  Frate's  sermons,  that  they  were  both  kneaded 
in  the  same  trough. 

"My  opinion  is,"  said  Niccolo  Ridolfi,  "that  the  Frate  has  a 
longer  head  for  public  matters  than  Soderini  or  any  Piagnone 
among  them :  you  may  depend  on  it  that  Soderini  is  his 
mouthpiece  more  than  he  is  Soderini's." 

"No,  Niccolo ;  there  I  differ  from  you,"  said  Bernardo 
Rucellai :  "  the  Frate  has  an  acute  mind,  and  readily  sees 
what  will  serve  his  own  ends  ;  but  it  is  not  likely  that  Pago- 
lantonio  Soderini,  who  has  had  long  experience  of  affairs,  and 
has  specially  studied  the  Venetian  Council,  should  be  much 
indebted  to  a  monk  for  ideas  on  that  subject.  No,  no  ;  Sode- 
rini loads  the  cannon  ;  though,  I  grant  you,  Fra  Girolamo 
brings  the  powder  and  lights  the  match.  He  is  master  of  the 
people,  and  the  people  are  getting  master  of  us.     Ecco  !  " 

"  Well,"  said  Lorenzo  Tornabuoui,  presently,  when  the  room 
was  clear  of  servants,  and  nothing  but  wine  was  passing  round, 


314  ROM  OLA. 

"  whether  Soderini  is  indebted  or  not,  ive  are  indebted  to  the 
Frate  for  the  general  amnesty  which  has  gone  along  with 
the  scheme  of  the  Council.  We  might  have  done  without  the 
fear  of  God  and  the  reform  of  morals  being  passed  by  a 
majority  of  black  beans ;  but  that  excellent  proposition,  that 
our  Medicean  heads  should  be  allowed  to  remain  comfortably 
on  our  shoulders,  and  that  we  should  not  be  obliged  to  hand 
over  our  property  in  fines,  has  my  warm  approval,  and  it  is 
my  belief  that  nothing  but  the  Frate's  predominance  could 
have  procured  that  for  us.  And  you  may  rely  on  it  that  Fra 
Girolamo  is  as  firm  as  a  rock  on  that  point  of  promoting 
peace.     I  have  had  an  interview  with  him." 

There  was  a  murmur  of  surprise  and  curiosity  at  the  farther 
end  of  the  table  ;  but  Bernardo  Kucellai  simply  nodded,  as  if 
he  knew  what  Tornabuoni  had  to  say,  and  wished  him  to  go  on. 

"  Yes,"  proceeded  Tornabuoni,  "  I  have  been  favored  with 
an  interview  in  the  Frate's  own  cell,  which,  let  me  tell  you, 
is  not  a  coinmon  favor;  for  I  have  reason  to  believe  that  even 
Francesco  Valori  very  seldom  sees  him  in  private.  However, 
I  think  he  saw  me  the  more  willingly  because  I  was  not  a 
ready-made  follower,  but  had  to  be  converted.  And,  for  my 
part,  I  see  clearly  enough  that  the  only  safe  and  wise  policy 
for  us  Mediceans  to  pursue  is  to  throw  our  strength  into  the 
scale  of  the  Frate's  party.  We  are  not  strong  enough  to  make 
head  on  our  own  behalf ;  and  if  the  Frate  and  the  popular 
party  were  upset,  every  one  who  hears  me  knows  perfectly 
well  what  other  party  would  be  uppermost  just  now :  Nerli, 
Alberti,  Pazzi,  and  the  rest  —  Arralbiati,  as  somebody  chris- 
tened them  the  other  day  —  who,  instead  of  giving  us  an  am- 
nesty, would  be  inclined  to  fly  at  our  throats  like  mad  dogs, 
and  not  be  satisfied  till  they  had  banished  half  of  us." 

There  were  strong  interjections  of  assent  to  this  last  sen- 
tence of  Tornabuoni's,  as  he  paused  and  looked  round  a 
moment. 

"  A  wise  dissimulation,"  he  went  on,  "  is  the  only  course  for 
moderate  rational  men  in  times  of  violent  party  feeling. 
I  need  hardly  tell  this  company  what  are  my  real  political 
attachments  :  I  am  not  the  only  man  here  who  has  strong  per- 
sonal ties  to  the  banished  family  ;  but,  apart  from  any  such 
ties,  I  agree  with  my  more  experienced  friends,  who  are  al- 
lowing me  to  speak  for  them  in  their  presence,  that  the  only 
lasting  and  peaceful  state  of  things  for  Florence  is  the  pre- 
dominance of  some  single  family  interest.  This  theory  of  the 
Frate's,  that  we  are  to  have  a  popular  government,  in  which 


A    SUPPER   IN   THE  RUCELLAI   GARDENS.      315 

every  man  is  to  strive  only  for  the  general  good,  and  know  no 
party  names,  is  a  theory  that  may  do  for  some  isle  of  Cristo- 
foro  Colombo's  finding,  but  will  never  do  for  our  fine  old  quar- 
relsome Florence.  A  change  must  come  before  long,  and  with 
patience  and  caution  we  have  every  chance  of  determining 
the  change  in  our  favor.  Meanwhile,  the  best  thing  we  can 
do  will  be  to  keep  the  Frate's  flag  flying,  for  if  any  other  were 
to  be  hoisted  just  now  it  would  be  a  black  flag  for  us." 

"  It's  true/'  said  Niccolo  Ridolfi,  in  a  curt  decisive  way. 
"  What  you  say  is  true,  Lorenzo.  For  my  own  part,  I  am 
too  old  for  anybody  to  believe  that  I've  changed  my 
feathers.  And  there  are  certain  of  us  —  our  old  Bernardo  del 
Nero  for  one  —  whom  you  would  never  persuade  to  borrow 
another  man's  shield.  But  we  can  lie  still,  like  sleepy  old 
dogs  ;  and  it's  clear  enough  that  barking  would  be  of  no  use 
just  now.  As  for  this  psalm-singing  party,  who  vote  for 
nothing  but  the  glory  of  God,  and  want  to  make  believe  we 
can  all  love  each  other,  and  talk  as  if  vice  could  be  swept  out 
with  a  besom  by  the  Magnificent  Eight,  their  day  will  not  be 
a  long  one.  After  all  the  talk  of  scholars,  there  are  but  two 
sorts  of  government :  one  where  men  show  their  teeth  at  each 
other,  and  one  where  men  show  their  tongues  and  lick  the 
feet  of  the  strongest.  They'll  get  their  Great  Council  finally 
voted  to-morrow  —  that's  certain  enough  —  and  they'll  think 
they've  found  out  a  new  plan  of  government ;  but  as  sure  as 
there's  a  human  skin  under  every  lucco  in  the  Council,  their 
new  plan  will  end  like  every  other,  in  snarling  or  in  licking. 
That's  my  view  of  things  as  a  plain  man.  Not  that  I  consider 
it  becoming  in  men  of  family  and  following,  who  have  got 
others  depending  on  their  constancy  and  on  their  sticking  to 
their  colors,  to  go  a-hunting  with  a  fine  net  to  catch  reasons  in 
the  air,  like  doctors  of  law.  I  say  frankly  that,  as  the  head 
of  my  family,  I  shall  be  true  to  my  old  alliances  ;  and  I  have 
never  yet  seen  any  chalk  mark  on  political  reasons  to  tell  me 
which  is  true  and  which  is  false.  My  friend  Bernardo 
Rucellai  here  is  a  man  of  reasons,  I  know,  and  I  have  no 
objection  to  anybody's  finding  fine-spun  reasons  for  me,  so 
that  they  don't  interfere  with  my  actions  as  a  man  of  family 
who  has  faith  to  keep  with  his  connections." 

"  If  that  is  an  appeal  to  me,  Niccolo,"  said  Bernardo  Rucellai, 
with  a  formal  dignity,  in  amusing  contrast  with  Eidolfi's  curt 
and  pithy  ease,  "  I  may  take  this  opportunity  of  saying,  that 
while  my  wishes  are  partly  determined  by  long-standing 
personal  relations,  I  cannot  enter  into  any  positive   schemes 


316  ROMOLA. 

with  persons  over  whose  actions  I  have  no  control.  I  myself 
might  be  content  with  a  restoration  of  the  old  order  of  things  ; 
but  with  modifications — with  important  modifications.  And 
the  one  point  on  which  I  wish  to  declare  my  concurrence  with 
Lorenzo  Tornabuoni  is,  that  the  best  policy  to  be  pursued  by 
our  friends  is,  to  throw  the  weight  of  their  interest  into  the 
scale  of  the  popular  party.  For  myself,  I  condescend  to  no 
dissimulation ;  nor  do  I  at  present  see  the  party  or  the 
scheme  that  commands  my  full  assent.  In  all  alike  there  is 
crudity  and  confusion  of  ideas,  and  of  all  the  twenty  men  who 
are  my  colleagues  in  the  present  crisis,  there  is  not  one  with 
whom  I  do  not  find  myself  in  wide  disagreement." 

Niccolo  Ridolfi  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  left  it  to  some 
one  else  to  take  up  the  ball.  As  the  wine  went  round  the 
talk  became  more  and  more  frank  and  lively,  and  the  desire 
of  several  at  once  to  be  the  chief  speaker,  as  usual,  caused 
the  company  to  break  up  into  small  knots  of  two  and  three. 

It  was  a  result  which  had  been  foreseen  by  Lorenzo  Torna- 
buoni and  Giannozzo  Pucci,  and  they  were  among  the  first  to 
turn  aside  from  the  highroad  of  general  talk  and  enter  into  a 
special  conversation  with  Tito,  who  sat  between  them  ;  gradu- 
ally pushing  away  their  seats,  and  turning  their  backs  on  the 
table  and  wine. 

"  In  truth,  Melema,"  Tornabuoni  was  saying  at  this  stage, 
laying  one  hose-clad  leg  across  the  knee  of  the  other,  and 
caressing  his  ankle,  "  I  know  of  no  man  in  Florence  who  can 
serve  our  party  better  than  you.  You  see  what  most  of  our 
friends  are  :  men  who  can  no  more  hide  their  prejudices  than 
a  dog  can  hide  the  natural  tone  of  his  bark,  or  else  men  whose 
political  ties  are  so  notorious,  that  they  must  always  be 
objects  of  suspicion.  Giannozzo  here,  and  I,  I  flatter  myself, 
are  able  to  overcome  that  suspicion ;  we  have  that  power  of 
concealment  and  finesse,  without  which  a  rational  cultivated 
man,  instead  of  having  any  prerogative,  is  really  at  a  dis- 
advantage compared  with  a  wild  bull  or  a  savage.  But, 
except  yourself,  I  know  of  no  one  else  on  whom  we  could 
rely  for  the  necessary  discretion." 

"  Yes,"  said  Giannozzo  Pucci,  laying  his  hand  on  Tito's 
shoulder,  "the  fact  is,  Tito  mio,  you  can  help  us  better  than 
if  you  were  Ulysses  himself,  for  I  am  convinced  that  Ulysses 
often  made  himself  disagreeable.  To  manage  men  one  ought 
to  have  a  sharp  mind  in  a  velvet  sheath.  And  there  is  not  a 
soul  in  Florence  who  could  undertake  a  business  like  this 
journey  to  Rome,  for  example,  with  the  same  safety  that  you 


A   SUPPER   IN   THE  RUCELLAI  GARDENS.      317 

can.  There  is  your  scholarship,  which  may  always  be  a  pre- 
text for  such  journeys ;  and  what  is  better,  there  is  your 
talent,  which  it  would  be  harder  to  match  than  your  scholar- 
ship. Niccolo  Macchiavelli  might  have  done  for  us  if  he  had 
been  on  our  side,  but  hardly  so  well.  He  is  too  much  bittea 
with  notions,  and  has  not  your  power  of  fascination.  All  the 
worse  for  him.  He  has  lost  a  great  chance  in  life,  and  you 
have  got  it." 

"  Yes,'*  said  Tornabuoni,  lowering  his  voice  in  a  significant 
manner,  "  you  have  only  to  play  your  game  well,  Melema,  and 
the  future  belongs  to  you.  For  the  Medici,  you  may  rely  upon 
it,  will  keep  a  foot  in  Rome  as  well  as  in  Florence,  and  the 
time  may  not  be  far  off  when  they  will  be  able  to  make  a 
finer  career  for  their  adherents  even  than  they  did  in  old 
days.  Why  shouldn't  yon  take  orders  some  day  ?  There's  a 
cardinal's  hat  at  the  end  of  that  road,  and  you  would  not  be 
the  first  Greek  who  has  worn  that  ornament." 

Tito  laughed  gayly.  He  was  too  acute  not  to  measure 
Tornabuoni's  exaggerated  flattery,  but  still  the  flattery  had  a 
pleasant  flavor. 

"  My  joints  are  not  so  stiff  yet,"  he  said,  "that  I  can't  be 
induced  to  run  without  such  a  high  prize  as  that.  I  think  the 
income  of  an  abbey  or  two  held  '  in  commendam,'  without 
the  trouble  of  getting  my  head  shaved,  would  satisfy  me  at 
present." 

"  I  was  not  joking,"  said  Tornabuoni,  with  grave  suavity; 
"  1  think  a  scholar  would  always  be  the  better  off  for  taking 
orders.  But  we'll  talk  of  that  another  time.  One  of  the  objects 
to  be  first  borne  in  mind,  is  that  you  should  win  the  confi- 
dence of  the  men  who  hang  about  San  Marco;  that  is  what 
Giannozzo  and  I  shall  do,  but  you  may  carry  it  farther  than 
we  can,  because  you  are  less  observed.  In  that  way  you  can 
get  a  thorough  knowledge  of  their  doings,  and  you  will  make 
a  broader  screen  for  your  agency  on  our  side.  Nothing,  of 
course,  can  be  done  before  you  start  for  Rome,  because  this 
bit  of  business  between  Piero  de'  Medici  and  the  French 
nobles  must  be  effected  at  once.  I  mean  when  you  come 
back,  of  course ;  I  need  say  no  more.  I  believe  you  could 
make  yourself  the  pet  votary  of  San  Marco,  if  you  liked ;  but 
you  aie  wise  enough  to  know  that  effective  dissimulation  is 
never  immoderate." 

"If  it  were  not  that  an  adhesion  to  the  popular  side  is 
necessary  to  your  safety  as  an  agent  of  our  party,  Tito  mio," 
said  Giannozzo  Pucci,  who  was  more  fraternal  and  less  patro- 


318  ROMOLA. 

nizing  in  his  manner  than  Tornabuoni,  "  I  could  have 
wished  your  skill  to  have  been  employed  in  another  way,  for 
which  it  is  still  better  fitted.  But  now  we  must  look  out  for 
some  other  man  among  us  who  will  manage  to  get  into  the 
confidence  of  our  sworn  enemies,  the  Arrabbiati ;  we  need  to 
know  their  movements  more  than  those  of  the  Frate's  party, 
who  are  strong  enough  to  play  above-board.  Still,  it  would 
have  been  a  difficult  thing  for  you,  from  your  known  relations 
with  the  Medici  a  little  while  back,  and  that  sort  of  kinship 
your  wife  has  with  Bernardo  del  Nero.  We  must  find  a  man 
who  has  no  distinguished  connections,  and  who  has  not  yet 
taken  any  side." 

Tito  was  pushing  his  hair  backward  automatically,  as  his 
manner  was,  and  looking  straight  at  Pucci  with  a  scarcely 
perceptible  smile  on  his  lip. 

"  No  need  to  look  out  for  any  one  else,"  he  said  promptly. 
"  I  can  manage  the  whole  business  with  perfect  ease.  I  will 
engage  to  make  myself  the  special  confidant  of  that  thick- 
headed Dolfo  Spini,  and  know  his  projects  before  he  knows 
them  himself." 

Tito  seldom  spoke  so  confidently  of  his  own  powers,  but  he 
was  iu  a  state  of  exaltation  at  the  sudden  opening  of  a  new  path 
before  him,  where  fortune  seemed  to  have  hung  higher  prizes 
than  any  he  had  thought  of  hitherto.  Hitherto  he  had  seen 
success  only  in  the  form  of  favor ;  it  now  flashed  on  him  in 
the  shape  of  power  —  of  such  power  as  is  possible  to  talent 
without  traditional  ties,  and  without  beliefs.  Each  party  that 
thought  of  him  as  a  tool  might  become  dependent  on  him. 
His  position  as  an  alien,  his  indifference  to  the  ideas  or 
prejudices  of  the  men  amongst  whom  he  moved,  were  sud- 
denly transformed  into  advantages ;  he  became  newly  con- 
scious of  his  own  adroitness  in  the  presence  of  a  game  tliat 
he  was  called  on  to  play.  And  all  the  motives  which  might 
have  made  Tito  shrink  from  the  triple  deceit  that  came  before 
him  as  a  tempting  game,  had  been  slowly  strangled  in  him 
by  the  successive  falsities  of  his  life. 

Our  lives  make  a  moral  tradition  for  our  individual  selves, 
as  the  life  of  mankind  at  large  makes  a  moral  tradition  for 
the  race ;  and  to  have  once  acted  nobly  seems  a  reason  wliy 
we  should  always  be  noble.  But  Tito  was  feeling  the  effect 
of  an  opposite  tradition  :  he  had  won  no  memories  of  self- 
conquest  and  perfect  faithfulness  from  which  he  could  have  a 
sense  of  falling. 

The  triple  colloquy  went  on  with  growing  spirit  till   it  was 


A    SUPPER  IN  THE  RU  CELL  A I  GARDENS.      319 

interrupted  by  a  call  from  tlie  table.  Probably  the  movement 
came  from  the  listeners  in  tlie  party,  who  were  afraid  lest  the 
talkers  should  tire  themselves.  At  all  events  it  was  agreed 
that  there  had  been  enough  of  gravity,  and  Rucellai  had  just 
ordered  new  flasks  of  Montepulciano. 

"  How  many  minstrels  are  there  among  us  ?  "  he  said,  when 
there  had  been  a  general  rallying  round  the  table.  "  Melema, 
I  think  you  are  the  chief :  Matteo  will  give  you  the  lute." 

"Ah,  yes!"  said  Giannozzo  Pucci,  "lead  the  last  chorus 
from  Poliziano's  'Orfeo,'  that  you  have  found  such  an 
excellent  measure  for,  and  we  will  all  fall  in :  — 

"  '  Ciascun  segua,  o  Bacco,  te: 
Bacco,  Bacco,  evoe,  evoe  ! '  " 

The  servant  put  the  lute  into  Tito's  hands,  and  then  said 
something  in  an  undertone  to  his  master.  A  little  subdued 
questioning  and  answering  went  on  between  them,  while  Tito 
touched  the  lute  in  a  preluding  way  to  the  strain  of  the 
chorus,  and  there  was  a  confusion  of  speech  and  musical  hum- 
ming all  round  the  table.  Bernardo  Rucellai  had  said,  "  Wait 
a  moment,  Melema  ;  "  but  the  words  had  been  unheard  by  Tito, 
who  was  leaning  towards  Pucci,  and  singing  low  to  him  the 
phrases  of  the  Maenad-chorus.  He  noticed  nothing  until  the 
buzz  round  the  table  suddenly  ceased,  and  the  notes  of  his  own 
voice,  with  its  soft  low-toned  triumph,  "  Evoe,  evoe ! "  fell  in 
startling  isolation. 

It  was  a  strange  moment.  Baldassarre  had  moved  round 
the  table  till  he  was  opposite  Tito,  and  as  the  hum  ceased 
there  might  be  seen  for  an  instant  Baldassarre's  fierce  dark 
eyes  bent  on  Tito's  bright  smiling  unconsciousness,  while 
the  low  notes  of  triumph  dropped  from  his  lips  into  the 
silence. 

Tito  looked  up  with  a  slight  start,  and  his  lips  turned  pale, 
but  he  seemed  hardly  more  moved  than  Giannozzo  Pucci,  who 
had  looked  up  at  the  same  moment  —  or  even  than  several 
others  round  the  table ;  for  that  sallow  deep-lined  face  with 
the  hatred  in  its  eyes  seemed  a  terrible  apparition  across  the 
wax-lit  ease  and  gayety.  And  Tito  quickly  recovered  some 
self-command.  "  A  mad  old  man  —  he  looks  like  it  —  he  is 
mad ! "  was  the  instantaneous  thought  that  brought  some 
courage  with  it ;  for  he  could  conjecture  no  inward  change  in 
Baldassarre  since  they  had  met  before.  He  just  let  his  eyes 
fall  and  laid  the  lute  on  the  table  with  apparent  ease ;  but  his 
fingers  pinched  the  neck  of  the  lute  hard  while  he  governed 


320  ROMOLA. 

his  head  and  his  glance  sufficiently  to  look  with  an  air  of  quiet 
appeal  towards  Bernardo  Rucellai,  who  said  at  once,  — 

"  Good  man,  what  is  your  business  ?  What  is  the  important 
declaration  that  you  have  to  make  ?  " 

"  Messer  Bernardo  Rucellai,  I  wish  you  and  your  honorable 
friends  to  know  in  what  sort  of  company  you  are  sitting. 
There  is  a  traitor  among  you." 

There  was  a  general  movement  of  alarm.  Every  one  present, 
except  Tito,  thought  of  political  danger  and  not  of  private 
injury. 

Baldassarre  began  to  speak  as  if  he  were  thoroughly  assured 
of  what  he  had  to  say ;  but,  in  spite  of  his  long  preparation 
for  this  moment,  there  was  the  tremor  of  overmastering 
excitement  in  his  voice.  His  passion  shook  him.  He  went 
on,  but  he  did  not  say  what  he  had  meant  to  say.  As  he  fixed 
his  eyes  on  Tito  again  the  passionate  words  were  like  blows 
—  they  defied  premeditation. 

"  There  is  a  man  among  you  who  is  a  scoundrel,  a  liar,  a 
robber.  I  was  a  father  to  him.  I  took  him  from  beggary  when 
he  was  a  child.  I  reared  him,  I  cherished  him,  I  taught  him, 
I  made  him  a  scholar.  My  head  has  lain  hard  that  his  might 
have  a  pillow.  And  he  left  me  in  slavery ;  he  sold  the  gems 
that  were  mine,  and  when  I  came  again,  he  denied  me." 

The  last  words  had  been  uttered  with  almost  convulsed 
agitation,  and  Baldassarre  paused,  trembling.  All  glances 
were  turned  on  Tito,  who  was  now  looking  straight  at 
Baldassarre.  It  was  a  moment  of  desperation  that  annihilated 
all  feeling  in  him,  except  the  determination  to  risk  anything 
for  the  chance  of  escape.  And  he  gathered  confidence  from 
the  agitation  by  which  Baldassarre  was  evidently  shaken.  He 
had  ceased  to  pinch  the  neck  of  the  lute,  and  had  thrust  his 
thumbs  into  his  belt,  while  his  lips  had  begun  to  assume  a 
slight  curl.  He  had  never  yet  done  an  act  of  murderous 
cruelty  even  to  the  smallest  animal  that  could  utter  a  cry,  but 
at  that  moment  he  would  have  been  capable  of  treading  the 
breath  from  a  smiling  child  for  the  sake  of  his  own  safety. 

"What  does  this  mean,  Melema?  "  said  Bernardo  Riieellai, 
in  a  tone  of  cautious  surprise.  He,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the 
company,  felt  relieved  that  the  tenor  of  the  accusation  was 
not  political. 

"  Messer  Bernardo,"  said  Tito,  "  I  believe  this  man  is  mad. 
T  did  not  recognize  him  the  first  time  he  encountered  me  in 
Florence,  but  I  know  now  that  he  is  the  servant  who  years 
ago  accompanied  me  and  my  adoptive  father  to  Greece,  and 


A   SUPPER  IN  THE  RUCELLAI   GARDENS.      321 

A^as  dismissed  on  account  of  misdemeanors.  His  name  is 
Jacopo  di  Nola.  Even  at  that  time  I  believe  his  mind  was 
unhinged,  for,  without  any  reason,  he  had  conceived  a  strange 
hatred  towards  me  ;  and  now  I  am  convinced  that  he  is  labor- 
ing under  a  mania  which  causes  him  to  mistake  his  identity. 
He  has  already  attempted  my  life  since  he  has  been  in 
Florence  ;  and  I  am  in  constant  danger  from  him.  But  he  is 
an  object  of  pity  rather  than  of  indignation.  It  is  too  certain 
that  my  father  is  dead.  You  have  only  my  word  for  it ;  but  I 
must  leave  it  to  your  judgment  how  far  it  is  probable  that  a 
man  of  intellect  and  learning  would  have  been  lurking  about 
in  dark  corners  for  the  last  month  with  the  purpose  of  assassin- 
ating me ;  or  how  far  it  is  probable  that,  if  this  man  were  my 
second  father,  I  could  have  any  motive  for  denying  him.  That 
story  about  my  being  rescued  from  beggary  is  the  vision  of  a 
diseased  brain.  But  it  will  be  a  satisfaction  to  me  at  least  if 
you  will  demand  from  him  proofs  of  his  identity,  lest  any 
malignant  person  should  choose  to  make  this  mad  impeachment 
a  reproach  to  me." 

Tito  had  felt  more  and  more  confidence  as  he  went  on ;  the 
lie  was  not  so  difficult  when  it  was  once  begun ;  and  as  the 
words  fell  easily  from  his  lips,  they  gave  him  a  sense  of  power 
such  as  men  feel  when  they  have  begun  a  muscular  feat 
successfully.  In  this  way  he  acquired  boldness  enough  to  end 
with  a  challenge  for  proofs. 

Baldassarre,  while  he  had  been  walking  in  the  gardens  and 
afterwards  waiting  in  an  outer  room  of  the  pavilion  with  the 
servants,  had  been  making  anew  the  digest  of  the  evidence  he 
would  bring  to  prove  his  identity  and  Tito's  baseness,  recall- 
ing the  description  and  history  of  his  gems,  and  assuring 
himself  by  rapid  mental  glances  that  he  could  attest  his 
learning  and  his  travels.  It  might  be  partly  owing  to  this 
nervous  strain  that  the  new  shock  of  rage  he  felt  as  Tito's  lie 
fell  on  his  ears  brought  a  strange  bodily  effect  with  it :  a  cold 
stream  seemed  to  rush  over  him,  and  the  last  words  of  the 
speech  seemed  to  be  drowned  by  ringing  chimes.  Thought 
gave  way  to  a  dizzy  horror,  as  if  the  earth  were  slipping  away 
from  under  him.  Every  one  in  the  room  was  looking  at  him 
as  Tito  ended,  and  saw  that  the  eyes  which  had  had  such  fierce 
intensity  only  a  few  minutes  before  had  now  a  vague  fear  in 
them.     He  clutched  the  back  of  a  seat,  and  was  silent. 

Hardly  any  evidence  could  have  been  more  in  favor  of  Tito's 
assertion. 

"Surely  I  have  seen  this  man  before,  somewhere,"  said 
Tornabuoni. 


322  ROMOLA. 

"  Certainly  yon  have,"  said  Tito,  readily,  in  a  low  tone. 
"  He  is  the  escaped  prisoner  who  clutched  me  on  the  steps  of 
the  Duomo.  1  did  not  recognize  him  then  ;  he  looks  now  more 
as  he  used  to  do,  except  that  he  has  a  more  unmistakable  air 
of  mad  imbecility." 

"  I  cast  no  doubt  on  your  word,  Melenia,"  said  Bernardo 
Rucellai,  with  cautious  gravity,  "  but  you  are  right  to  desire 
some  positive  test  of  the  fact."  Then  turning  to  Baldassarre, 
he  said,  "  If  you  are  the  person  you  claim  to  be,  you  can  doubt- 
less give  some  description  of  the  gems  which  were  your 
property.  I  myself  was  the  purchaser  of  more  than  one  gem 
from  Messer  Tito  —  the  chief  rings,  I  believe,  in  his  collection. 
One  of  them  is  a  fine  sard,  engraved  with  a  subject  from 
Homer.  If,  as  you  allege,  you  are  a  scholar,  and  the  rightful 
owner  of  that  ring,  you  can  doubtless  turn  to  the  noted  passage 
in  Homer  from  which  that  subject  is  taken.  Do  you  accept 
this  test,  Melema  ?  or  have  j^ou  anything  to  allege  against  its 
validity  ?     The  Jacopo  you  speak  of,  was  he  a  scholar  ?  " 

It  was  a  fearful  crisis  for  Tito.  If  he  said  "  Yes,"  his 
quick  mind  told  him  that  he  would  shake  the  credibility  of 
his  story :  if  he  said  '•  No,"  he  risked  everything  on  the 
uncertain  extent  of  Baldassarre's  imbecility.  But  there  was 
no  noticeable  pause  before  he  said,  "  No.     I  accept  the  test." 

There  was  a  dead  silence  while  Rucellai  moved  towards  the 
recess  where  the  books  were,  and  came  back  with  the  fine 
Florentine  Homer  in  his  hand.  Baldassarre,  when  he  was 
addressed,  had  turned  his  head  towards  the  speaker,  and 
Rucellai  believed  that  he  had  understood  him.  But  he  chose 
to  repeat  what  he  had  said,  that  there  might  be  no  mistake  as 
to  the  test. 

"The  ring  I  possess,"  he  said,  "is  a  fine  sard,  engraved  with 
a  subject  from  Homer.  There  was  no  other  at  all  resembling 
it  in  Messer  Tito's  collection.  Will  you  turn  to  the  passage 
in  Homer  from  which  that  subject  is  taken  ?  Seat  yourself 
here,"  he  added,  laying  the  book  on  the  table,  and  pointing 
to  his  own  seat  while  he  stood  beside  it. 

Baldassarre  had  so  far  recovered  from  the  first  confused 
horror  produced  by  the  sensation  of  rushing  coldness  and 
chiming  din  in  the  ears  as  to  be  partly  aware  of  what  was 
said  to  him  :  he  was  aware  that  something  was  being  de- 
manded from  him  to  prove  his  identity,  but  he  formed  no 
distinct  idea  of  the  details.  The  sight  of  the  book  recalled 
the  habitual  longing  and  faint  hope  that  he  could  read  and 
understand,  and  he  moved  towards  the  chair  immediately. 


A   SUPPER   IN  THE  RUCELLAl   GARDENS.      323 

The  book  was  open  before  him,  and  he  bent  his  head  a  little 
towards  it,  while  everybody  watched  him  eagerly.  He  turned 
no  leaf.  His  eyes  wandered  over  the  pages  that  lay  before 
him,  and  then  fixed  on  them  a  straining  gaze.  This  lasted  for 
two  or  three  minutes  in  dead  silence.  Then  he  lifted  his 
hands  to  each  side  of  his  head,  and  said,  in  a  low  tone 
of  despair,  "  Lost,  lost !  " 

There  was  something  so  piteous  in  the  wandering  look  and 
the  low  cry,  that  while  they  confirmed  the  belief  in  his 
madness  they  raised  compassion.  Nay,  so  distinct  sometimes 
is  the  working  of  a  double  consciousness  within  us,  that  Tito 
himself,  while  he  triumphed  in  the  apparent  verification 
of  his  lie,  wished  that  he  had  never  made  the  lie  necessary 
to  himself — wished  he  had  recognized  his  father  on  the  steps 
—  wished  he  had  gone  to  seek  him  —  wished  everything  had 
been  different.  But  he  had  borrowed  from  the  terrible  usurer 
Falsehood,  and  the  loan  had  mounted  and  mounted  with  the 
years,  till  he  belonged  to  the  usurer,  body  and  soul. 

The  compassion  excited  in  all  the  witnesses  was  not  with- 
out its  danger  to  Tito  ;  for  conjecture  is  constantly  guided  by 
feeling,  and  more  than  one  person  suddenly  conceived  that 
this  man  might  have  been  a  scholar  and  have  lost  his  facul- 
ties. On  the  other  hand,  they  had  not  present  to  their  minds 
the  motives  which  could  have  led  Tito  to  the  denial  of  his 
benefactor,  and  having  no  ill-will  towards  him,  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  them  to  believe  that  he  had  been  uttering  the 
basest  of  lies.  And  the  originally  common  type  of  Baldas- 
sarre's  person,  coarsened  by  years  of  hardship,  told  as  a  con- 
firmation of  Tito's  lie.  If  Baldassarre,  to  begin  with,  could 
have  uttered  precisely  the  words  he  had  premeditated,  there 
might  have  been  something  in  the  form  of  his  accusation 
which  would  have  given  it  the  stamp  not  only  of  true  experi- 
ence but  of  mental  refinement.  But  there  had  been  no  such 
testimony  in  his  impulsive  agitated  words  ;  and  there  seemed 
the  very  opposite  testimony  in  the  rugged  face  and  the 
coarse  hands  that  trembled  beside  it,  standing  out  in  strong 
contrast  in  the  midst  of  that  velvet-clad,  fair-handed  com- 
pany. 

His  next  movement,  while  he  was  being  watched  in  silence, 
told  against  him  too.  He  took  his  hands  from  his  head,  and 
felt  for  something  under  his  tunic.  Every  one  guessed  what 
that  movement  meant  —  guessed  that  there  was  a  weapon  at 
his  side.  Glances  were  interchanged  ;  and  Bernardo  Kucellai 
said,  in  a  quiet  tone,  touching  Baldassarre's  shoulder,  — 


324  ROMOLA. 

"  My  friend,  this  is  an  important  business  of  yours.  You 
shall  have  all  justice.     Follow  me  into  a  private  room." 

Baldassarre  was  still  in  that  half-stunned  state  in  which  he 
was  susceptible  to  any  prompting,  in  the  same  way  as  an 
insect  that  forms  no  conception  of  what  the  prompting  leads 
to.  He  rose  from  his  seat,  and  followed  Rucellai  out  of  the 
room. 

In  two  or  three  minutes  Rucellai  came  back  again,  and 
said,  — 

"  He  is  safe  under  lock  and  key.  Piero  Pitti,  you  are  one 
of  the  Magnificent  Eight,  what  do  you  think  of  our  sending 
Matteo  to  the  palace  for  a  couple  of  sbirri,  who  may  escort 
him  to  the  Stinche  ?  ^  If  there  is  any  danger  in  him,  as  I 
think  there  is,  he  will  be  safe  there ;  and  we  can  inquire  about 
him  to-morrow." 

Pitti  assented,  and  the  order  was  given. 

"  He  is  certainly  an  ill-looking  fellow,"  said  Tornabuoni. 
"  And  you  say  he  has  attempted  your  life  already,  Melema  ?  " 

And  the  talk  turned  on  the  various  forms  of  madness,  and 
the  fierceness  of  the  southern  blood.  If  the  seeds  of  conjec- 
ture unfavorable  to  Tito  had  been  planted  in  the  mind  of  any 
one  present,  they  were  hardly  strong  enough  to  grow  without 
the  aid  of  much  daylight  and  ill-will.  The  common-looking, 
wild-eyed  old  man,  clad  in  serge,  might  have  won  belief  without 
very  strong  evidence,  if  he  had  accused  a  man  who  was  envied 
and  disliked.  As  it  was,  the  only  congruous  and  probable 
view  of  the  case  seemed  to  be  the  one  that  sent  the  unpleasant 
accuser  safely  out  of  sight,  and  left  the  pleasant  serviceable 
Tito  just  where  he  was  before. 

The  subject  gradually  floated  away,  and  gave  place  to 
others,  till  a  heavy  tramp,  and  something  like  the  struggling 
of  a  man  who  was  being  dragged  away,  were  heard  outside. 
The  sounds  soon  died  out,  and  the  interruption  seemed  to 
make  the  last  hour's  conviviality  more  resolute  and  vigorous. 
Every  one  was  willing  to  forget  a  disagreeable  incident. 

Tito's  heart  was  palpitating,  and  the  wine  tasted  no  better 
to  him  than  if  it  had  been  blood. 

To-night  he  had  paid  a  heavier  price  than  ever  to  make 
himself  safe.  He  did  not  like  the  price,  and  yet  it  was 
inevitable  that  he  should  be  glad  of  the  purchase. 

And  after  all  he  led  the  chorus.  He  was  in  a  state  of 
excitement  in  which  oppressive  sensations,  and  the  wretched 
consciousness    of    something   hateful    but  irrevocable,    were 

'  The  largest  prison  in  Florence. 


AN  ARRESTING    VOICE.  326 

mingled  with  a  feeling  of  triumph  which  seemed  to  assert 
itself  as  the  feeling  that  would  subsist  and  be  master  of  the 
morrow. 

And  it  ^vas  master.  For  on  the  morrow,  as  we  saw,  when 
he  was  about  to  start  on  his  mission  to  Rome,  he  had  the  air 
of  a  man  well  satisfied  with  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XL. 

AN    ARRESTING    VOICE. 

When  Romola  sat  down  on  the  stone  under  the  cypress,  all 
things  conspired  to  give  her  the  sense  of  freedom  and  soli- 
tude :  her  escape  from  the  accustomed  walls  and  streets ;  the 
widening  distance  from  her  husband,  who  was  by  this  time 
riding  towards  Siena,  while  every  hour  would  take  her  farther 
on  the  opposite  way ;  the  morning  stillness  ;  the  great  dip  of 
ground  on  the  roadside  making  a  gulf  between  her  and  the 
sombre  calm  of  the  mountains.  For  the  first  time  in  her  life 
she  felt  alone  in  the  presence  of  the  earth  and  sky,  with  no 
human  presence  interposing  and  making  a  law  for  her. 

Suddenly  a  voice  close  to  her  said,  — 

"  You  are  Romola  de'  Bardi,  the  wife  of  Tito  Melema." 

She  knew  the  voice  :  it  had  vibrated  through  her  more  than 
once  before  ;  and  because  she  knew  it,  she  did  not  turn  round 
or  look  up.  She  sat  shaken  by  awe,  and  yet  inwardly  rebel- 
ling against  the  awe.  It  was  one  of  those  black-skirted 
monks  who  was  daring  to  speak  to  her,  and  interfere  with  her 
privacy :  that  was  all.  And  yet  she  was  shaken,  as  if  that 
destiny  which  men  thought  of  as  a  sceptred  deity  had  come  to 
her,  and  grasped  her  with  fingers  of  flesh. 

''You  are  fleeing  from  Florence  in  disguise.  I  have  a  com- 
mand from  God  to  stop  you.     You  are  not  permitted  to  flee." 

Eomola's  anger  at  the  intrusion  mounted  higher  at  these 
imperative  words.  She  would  not  turn  round  to  look  at  the 
speaker,  whose  examining  gaze  she  resented.  Sitting  quite 
motionless,  she  said,  — 

"  What  right  have  you  to  speak  to  me,  or  to  hinder  me  ?  " 

"The  right  of  a  messenger.  You  have  put  on  a  religious 
garb,  and  you  have  no  religious  purpose.  You  have  sought 
the  garb  as  a  disguise.     But  you  were  not  suffered  to  pass  me 


826  ROMOLA. 

without  being  discerned.  It  was  declared  to  me  who  you 
were  :  it  is  declared  to  me  that  you  are  seeking  to  escape  from 
the  lot  God  has  laid  upon  you.  You  wish  your  true  name  and 
your  true  place  in  life  to  be  hidden,  that  you  may  choose  for 
yourself  a  new  name  and  a  new  place,  and  have  no  rule  but 
your  own  will.  And  I  have  a  command  to  call  you  back.  My 
daughter,  you  must  return  to  your  place." 

Romola's  mind  rose  in  stronger  rebellion  with  every  sen- 
tence. She  was  the  more  determined  not  to  show  any  sign  of 
submission,  because  the  consciousness  of  being  inwardly 
shaken  made  her  dread  lest  she  should  fall  into  irresolution. 
She  spoke  with  more  irritation  than  before. 

"  I  will  not  return,  I  acknowledge  no  right  of  priests  and 
monks  to  interfere  with  my  actions.  You  have  no  power  over 
me." 

"  I  know  —  I  know  you  have  been  brought  up  in  scorn  of 
obedience.  But  it  is  not  the  poor  monk  who  claims  to  inter- 
fere with  you :  it  is  the  truth  that  commands  you.  And  you 
cannot  escape  it.  Either  you  must  obey  it,  and  it  will  lead 
you ;  or  you  must  disobey  it,  and  it  will  hang  on  you  with  the 
weight  of  a  chain  which  you  will  drag  forever.  But  you  will 
obey  it,  my  daughter.  Your  old  servant  will  return  to  you 
with  the  mules ;  my  companion  is  gone  to  fetch  him ;  and  you 
will  go  back  to  Florence." 

She  started  up  with  anger  in  her  eyes,  and  faced  the  speaker. 
It  was  Fra  Girolamo :  she  knew  that  well  enough  before. 
She  was  nearly  as  tall  as  he  was,  and  their  faces  were  almost 
on  a  level.  She  had  started  up  with  defiant  words  ready  to 
burst  from  her  lips,  but  they  fell  back  again  without  utterance. 
She  had  met  Fra  Girolamo's  calm  glance,  and  the  impression 
from  it  was  so  new  to  her,  that  her  anger  sank  ashamed  as 
something  irrelevant. 

There  was  nothing  transcendent  in  Savonarola's  face.  It  was 
not  beautiful.  It  was  strong-featured,  and  owed  all  its  refine- 
ment to  habits  of  mind  and  rigid  discipline  of  the  body.  The 
source  of  the  impression  his  glance  produced  on  Romola  was 
the  sense  it  conveyed  to  her  of  interest  in  her  and  care  for 
her  apart  from  any  personal  feeling.  It  was  the  first  time  she 
had  encountered  a  gaze  in  which  simple  human  fellowship  ex- 
pressed itself  as  a  strongly  felt  bond.  Such  a  glance  is  half 
the  vocation  of  the  priest  or  s[)iritual  guide  of  men,  and 
Itomola  felt  it  impossible  again  to  question  his  authority  to 
speak  to  her.  She  stood  silent,  looking  at  him.  And  he  spoke 
again. 


AN  ARRESTING    VOICE.  327 

"You  assert  your  freedom  proudly,  my  daughter.  But  who 
is  so  base  as  the  debtor  that  thinks  himself  free  ?  " 

There  was  a  sting  in  those  words,  and  Romola's  countenance 
changed  as  if  a  subtle  pale  flash  had  gone  over  it. 

"  And  you  are  flying  from  your  debts  :  the  debt  of  a  Floren- 
tine woman ;  the  debt  of  a  wife.  You  are  turning  your  back 
on  the  lot  that  has  been  appointed  for  you  —  you  are  going  to 
choose  another.  But  can  man  or  woman  choose  duties  ?  No 
more  than  they  can  choose  their  birthplace  or  their  father  and 
mother.  My  daughter,  you  are  fleeing  from  the  presence  of 
God  into  the  wilderness." 

As  the  anger  melted  from  Eomola's  mind,  it  had  given 
place  to  a  new  presentiment  of  the  strength  there  might  be  in 
submission,  if  this  man,  at  whom  she  was  beginning  to  look 
with  a  vague  reverence,  had  some  valid  law  to  show  her.  But 
no  —  it  was  impossible ;  he  could  not  know  what  determined 
her.  Yet  she  could  not  again  simply  refuse  to  be  guided ;  she 
was  constrained  to  plead ;  and  in  her  new  need  to  be  reverent 
while  she  resisted,  the  title  which  she  had  never  given  him 
before  came  to  her  lips  without  forethought. 

"  My  father,  you  cannot  know  the  reasons  which  compel  me 
to  go.  None  can  know  them  but  myself.  None  can  judge  for 
me.  I  have  been  driven  by  great  sorrow.  I  am  resolved  to 
go." 

"  I  know  enough,  my  daughter :  my  mind  has  been  so  far 
illuminated  concerning  you,  that  I  know  enough.  You  are  not 
happy  in  your  married  life ;  but  I  am  not  a  confessor,  and 
seek  to  know  nothing  that  should  be  reserved  for  the  seal  of 
confession.  I  have  a  divine  warrant  to  stop  you,  which  does 
not  depend  on  such  knowledge.  You  were  w^arned  by  a  mes- 
sage from  heaven,  delivered  in  my  presence — you  were 
warned  before  marriage,  when  you  might  still  have  lawfully 
chosen  to  be  free  from  the  marriage-bond.  But  you  chose  the 
bond ;  and  in  wilfully  breaking  it  —  I  speak  to  you  as  a  pagan, 
if  the  holy  mystery  of  matrimony  is  not  sacred  to  you  —  you 
are  breaking  a  pledge.  Of  what  wrongs  will  you  complain, 
my  daughter,  when  you  yourself  are  committing  one  of  the 
greatest  wrongs  a  woman  and  a  citizen  can  be  gviilty  of  —  with- 
drawing in  secrecy  and  disguise  from  a  pledge  Avhich  you  have 
given  in  the  face  of  God  and  your  fellow-men  ?  Of  what 
wrongs  will  you  complain,  when  you  yourself  are  breaking  the 
simplest  law  that  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the  trust  which 
binds  man  to  man  —  faithfulness  to  the  spoken  w^ord  ?  This, 
then,  is  the  wisdom  you  have  gained  by  scorning  the  mysteries 


328  ROMOLA. 

of  the  Cliurcli?  — not  to  see  the  bare  duty  of  integrity,  where 
the  Church  would  have  taught  you  to  see,  not  integrity  only, 
but  religion." 

The  blood  had  rushed  to  Romola's  face,  and  she  shrank  as 
if  she  had  been  stricken.  "  I  would  not  have  put  on  a  dis- 
guise," she  began ;  but  she  could  not  go  on,  —  she  was  too 
much  shaken  by  the  suggestion  in  the  Frate's  words  of  a  pos- 
sible affinity  between  her  own  conduct  and  Tito's. 

"  And  to  break  that  pledge  you  fly  from  Florence  :  Florence, 
where  there  are  the  only  men  and  women  in  the  world  to  whom 
you  owe  the  debt  of  a  fellow-citizen." 

''I  should  never  have  quitted  Florence,"  said  Roniola, 
tremulously,  "  as  long  as  there  was  any  hope  of  my  fulfilling 
a  duty  to  my  father  there." 

"  And  do  you  own  no  tie  but  that  of  a  child  to  her  father  in 
the  flesh  ?  Your  life  has  been  spent  in  blindness,  my  daugh- 
ter. You  have  lived  with  those  who  sit  on  a  hill  aloof,  and 
look  down  on  the  life  of  their  fellow-men.  1  know  their  vaiu 
discourse.  It  is  of  what  has  been  in  the  times  which  they 
till  with  their  own  fancied  wisdom,  while  they  scorn  God's 
work  in  the  present.  And  doubtless  you  were  taught  how  there 
were  pagan  women  who  felt  what  it  was  to  live  for  the  Repub- 
lic ;  yet  you  have  never  felt  that  you,  a  Florentine  woman, 
should  live  for  Florence.  If  your  own  people  are  wearing  a 
yoke,  will  you  slip  from  under  it,  instead  of  struggling  with 
them  to  lighten  it  ?  There  is  hunger  and  misery  in  our 
streets,  yet  you  say,  'I  care  not ;  I  have  my  own  sorrows;  I 
will  go  away,  if  peradventure  I  can  ease  them.'  The  servants 
of  God  are  struggling  after  a  law  of  justice,  peace,  and  char- 
ity, that  the  hundred  thousand  citizens  among  whom  you  were 
born  may  be  governed  righteously ;  but  you  think  no  more  of 
this  than  if  you  were  a  bird,  that  may  spread  its  wings  and 
fly  whither  it  will  in  search  of  food  to  its  liking.  And  yet 
you  have  scorned  the  teaching  of  the  Church,  my  daughter. 
As  if  you,  a  wilful  wanderer,  following  your  own  blind  choice, 
were  not  below  the  humblest  Florentine  woman  who  stretches 
forth  her  hands  with  her  own  people,  and  craves  a  blessing  for 
them;  and  feels  a  close  sisterhood  with  the  neighbor  who 
kneels  beside  her  and  is  not  of  her  own  blood ;  and  thinks  of 
the  mighty  purpose  that  God  has  for  Florence  ;  and  waits  and 
endures  because  the  promised  work  is  great,  and  she  feels 
herself  little." 

''I  was  not  going  away  to  ease  and  self-indulgence,"  said 
Romola,  raising  her  head  again,  with  a  prompting  to  vindicate 


AN  ARRESTING    VOICE.  329 

herself.  "  I  was  going  away  to  hardship.  I  expect  no  joy  :  it 
is  gone  from  my  life." 

"  You  are  seeking  your  own  will,  my  daughter.  You  are 
seeking  some  good  other  than  the  law  you  are  bound  to  obey. 
But  how  will  you  find  good  ?  It  is  not  a  thing  of  choice  :  it 
is  a  river  that  flows  from  the  foot  of  the  Invisible  Throne,  and 
flows  by  the  path  of  obedience.  I  say  again,  man  cannot 
choose  his  duties.  You  may  choose  to  forsake  your  duties,  and 
choose  not  to  have  the  sorrow  they  bring.  But  you  will  go 
forth  ;  and  what  will  you  find,  my  daughter  ?  Sorrow  with- 
out duty  —  bitter  herbs,  and  no  bread  with  them." 

"  But  if  you  knew,"  said  Romola,  clasping  her  hands  and 
pressing  them  tight,  as  she  looked  pleadingly  at  Fra  Girolamo ; 
"if  you  knew  what  it  was  to  me  —  how  impossible  it  seemed 
to  me  to  bear  it." 

"  My  daughter,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  cord  round  Romola's 
neck,  "you  cai*ry  something  within  your  mantle ;  draw  it  forth, 
and  look  at  it." 

Romola  gave  a  slight  start,  but  her  impulse  now  was  to  do 
just  what  Savonarola  told  her.  Her  self-doubt  was  grappled 
by  a  stronger  will  and  a  stronger  conviction  than  her  own. 
She  drew  forth  the  crucifix.  Still  pointing  towards  it,  he 
said,  — 

"  There,  my  daughter,  is  the  image  of  a  Supreme  Offering, 
made  by  Supreme  Love,  because  the  need  of  man  was  great." 

He  paused,  and  she  held  the  crucifix  trembling  —  trembling 
under  a  sudden  impression  of  the  wide  distance  between  her 
present  and  her  past  self.  What  a  length  of  road  she  had 
travelled  through  since  she  first  took  that  crucifix  from  the 
Frate's  hands  !  Had  life  as  many  secrets  before  her  still  as 
it  had  for  her  then,  in  her  young  blindness  ?  It  was  a  thought 
that  helped  all  other  subduing  influences  ;  and  at  the  sound  of 
Fra  Girolamo's  voice  again,  Romola,  with  a  quick  involuntary 
movement,  pressed  the  crucifix  against  her  mantle  and  looked 
at  him  with  more  submission  than  before. 

'•  Conform  your  life  to  that  image,  my  daughter ;  make  your 
sorrow  an  offering  :  and  when  the  fire  of  Divine  charity  burns 
within  you,  and  you  behold  the  need  of  your  fellow-men  by 
the  light  of  that  flame,  you  will  not  call  your  offering  great. 
You  have  carried  yourself  proudly,  as  one  who  held  herself 
not  of  common  blood  or  of  common  thoughts  ;  but  you  have 
been  as  one  unborn  to  the  true  life  of  man.  What !  you  say 
your  love  for  your  father  no  longer  tells  you  to  stay  in  Flor- 
ence ?     Then,  since  that  tie  is  snapped,  you  are  without  a  laW; 


330  ROMOLA. 

without  religion :  you  are  no  better  than  a  beast  of  the  field 
when  she  is  robbed  of  her  young.  If  the  yearning  of  a  fleshly 
love  is  gone,  you  are  without  love,  without  obligation.  See, 
then,  my  daughter,  how  you  are  below  the  life  of  the  believer 
who  worships  that  image  of  the  Supreme  Offering,  and  feels 
the  glow  of  a  common  life  with  the  lost  multitude  for  whom 
that  offering  was  made,  and  beholds  the  history  of  the  world 
as  the  history  of  a  great  redemption  in  which  he  is  himself  a 
fellow-worker,  in  his  own  place  and  among  his  own  people ! 
If  you  held  that  faith,  my  beloved  daughter,  you  would  not  be 
a  wanderer  flying  from  suffering,  and  blindly  seeking  the  good 
of  a  freedom  which  is  lawlessness.  You  would  feel  that 
Florence  was  the  home  of  your  soul  as  well  as  your  birthplace, 
because  you  would  see  the  work  that  was  given  you  to  do  there. 
If  you  forsake  your  place,  who  will  fill  it  ?  You  ought  to  be 
in  your  place  now,  helping  in  the  great  work  by  which  God 
will  purify  Florence,  and  raise  it  to  be  the  guide  of  the  nations. 
What !  the  earth  is  full  of  iniquity  —  full  of  groans  —  the 
light  is  still  struggling  with  a  mighty  darkness,  and  you  say,  '  I 
cannot  bear  my  bonds ;  I  will  burst  them  asunder ;  I  will  go 
where  no  man  claims  me  '  ?  My  daughter,  every  bond  of  your 
life  is  a  debt :  the  right  lies  in  the  payment  of  that  debt ;  it 
can  lie  nowhere  else.  In  vain  will  you  wander  over  the  earth,- 
you  will  be  wandering  forever  away  from  the  right." 

Romola  was  inwardly  struggling  with  strong  forces  :  thaj 
immense  personal  influence  of  Savonarola,  which  came  from 
the  energy  of  his  emotions  and  beliefs  ;  and  her  consciousness, 
surmounting  all  prejudice,  that  his  words  implied  a  higher 
law  than  any  she  had  yet  obeyed.  But  the  resisting  thoughts 
were  not  yet  overborne. 

"  How,  then,  could  Dino  be  right  ?  He  broke  ties.  He 
forsook  his  place." 

'•That  was  a  special  vocation.  He  was  constrained  to 
depart,  else  he  could  not  have  attained  the  higher  life.  It 
would  have  been  stifled  within  him." 

"  And  I  too,"  said  Romola,  raising  her  hands  to  her  brow, 
and  speaking  in  a  tone  of  anguish,  as  if  she  were  being 
dragged  to  some  torture.     "  Father,  you  may  be  wrong." 

''  Ask  your  conscience,  my  daughter.  You  have  no  vocation 
such  as  your  brother  had.  You  are  a  wife.  You  seek  to 
break  your  ties  in  self-will  and  anger,  not  because  the  higher 
life  calls  upon  you  to  renounce  them.  The  higher  life  begins 
for  us,  my  daughter,  when  we  renounce  our  own  will  to  bow 
before  a  Divine  law.     That   seems  hard  to  you.     It  is  the 


AN  ARRESTING   VOICE.  331 

portal  of  wisdom,  and  freedom,  and  blessedness.  And  the 
symbol  of  it  hangs  before  you.  That  wisdom  is  the  religion 
of  the  Cross.  And  you  stand  aloof  from  it :  you  are  a  pagan  ; 
you  have  been  taught  to  say,  'I  am  as  the  wise  men  who 
lived  before  the  time  when  the  Jew  of  Nazareth  was  crucified.' 
And  that  is  your  wisdom  !  To  be  as  the  dead  whose  eyes  are 
closed,  and  whose  ear  is  deaf  to  the  work  of  God  that  has 
been  since  their  time.  What  has  your  dead  wisdom  done  for 
you,  my  daughter  ?  It  has  left  you  without  a  heart  for  the 
neighbors  among  whom  you  dwell,  without  care  for  the  great 
work  by  which  Florence  is  to  be  regenerated  and  the  world 
made  holy  ;  it  has  left  you  without  a  share  in  the  Divine  life 
which  quenches  the  sense  of  suffering  Self  in  the  ardors  of  an 
ever-growing  love.  And  now,  when  the  sword  has  pierced 
your  soul,  you  say,  '  I  will  go  away ;  I  cannot  bear  my  sorrow.' 
And  you  think  nothing  of  the  sorrow  and  the  wrong  that  are 
within  the  walls  of  the  city  where  you  dwell :  you  would 
leave  your  place  empty,  when  it  ought  to  be  filled  with  your 
pity  and  your  labor.  If  there  is  wickedness  in  the  streets, 
your  steps  should  shine  with  the  light  of  purity ;  if  there  is 
a  cry  of  anguish,  you,  my  daughter,  because  you  know  the 
meaning  of  the  cry,  should  be  there  to  still  it.  My  beloved 
daughter,  sorrow  has  come  to  teach  you  a  new  worship :  tlie 
sign  of  it  hangs  before  you." 

Romola's  mind  was  still  torn  by  conflict.  She  foresaw  that 
she  should  obey  Savonarola  and  go  back  :  his  words  had  come 
to  her  as  if  they  were  an  interpretation  of  that  revulsion  from 
self-satisfied  ease,  and  of  that  new  fellowship  with  suffering, 
which  had  already  been  awakened  in  her.  His  arresting 
voice  had  brought  a  new  condition  into  her  life,  which  made 
it  seem  impossible  to  her  that  she  could  go  on  her  way  as  if 
she  had  not  heard  it ;  yet  she  shrank  as  one  who  sees  the 
path  she  must  take,  but  sees,  too,  that  the  hot  lava  lies  there. 
And  the  instinctive  shrinking  from  a  return  to  her  husband 
brought  doubts.  She  turned  away  her  eyes  from  Fra  Girolamo, 
and  stood  for  a  minute  or  two  with  her  hands  hanging  clasped 
before  her,  like  a  statue.  At  last  she  spoke,  as  if  the  words 
were  being  wrung  from  her,  still  looking  on  the  ground. 
''  My  husband  ...  he  is  not  .  .  .  my  love  is  gone  ! " 
"  My  daughter,  there  is  the  bond  of  a  higher  love.  Mar- 
riage is  not  carnal  only,  made  for  selfish  delight.  See  what 
that  thought  leads  you  to !  It  leads  you  to  wander  away  in 
a  false  garb  from  all  the  obligations  of  your  place  and  name. 
That  would  not  have  been,  if  you  had  learned  that  it  is  a  sac- 


332  ROMOLA. 

ramental  vow,  from  which  none  but  God  can  release  you. 
My  daughter,  your  life  is  not  as  a  grain  of  sand,  to  be  blown 
by  the  winds ;  it  is  a  thing  of  flesh  and  blood,  that  dies  if  it 
be  sundered.     Your  husband  is  not  a  malefactor  ?  " 

Romola  started.  "  Heaven  forbid  !  No ;  I  accuse  him  of 
nothing." 

"  I  did  not  suppose  he  was  a  malefactor.  I  meant,  that  if 
he  were  a  malefactor,  your  place  would  be  in  the  prison 
beside  him.  My  daughter,  if  the  cross  comes  to  you  as  a  wife, 
you  must  carry  it  as  a  wife.  You  may  say,  '  I  will  forsake 
my  husband,'  but  you  cannot  cease  to  be  a  wife." 

"  Yet  if  —  oh,  how  could  I  bear  "  —  Romola  had  involunta- 
rily begun  to  say  something  which  she  sought  to  banish  from 
her  mind  again. 

''  Make  your  marriage-sorrows  an  offering  too,  my  daughter : 
an  offering  to  the  great  work  by  which  sin  and  sorrow  are 
being  made  to  cease.  The  end  is  sure,  and  is  already  begin- 
ning. Here  in  Florence  it  is  beginning,  and  the  eyes  of  faith 
behold  it.  And  it  may  be  our  blessedness  to  die  for  it :  to  die 
daily  by  the  crucifixion  of  our  selfish  will  —  to  die  at  last  by 
laying  our  bodies  on  the  altar.  My  daughter,  you  are  a  child 
of  Florence;  fulfil  the  duties  of  that  great  inheritance.  Live 
for  Florence  —  for  your  own  people,  whom  God  is  preparing 
to  bless  the  earth.  Bear  the  anguish  and  the  smart.  The 
iron  is  sharp  —  I  know,  I  know  —  it  rends  the  tender  flesh. 
The  draught  is  bitterness  on  the  lips.  But  there  is  rapture 
in  the  cup  —  there  is  the  vision  which  makes  all  life  below  it 
dross  forever.    Come,  my  daughter,  come  back  to  your  place  !  " 

While  Savonarola  spoke  with  growing  intensity,  his  arms 
tightly  folded  before  him  still,  as  they  had  been  from  the 
first,  but  his  face  alight  as  from  an  inward  flame,  Romola  felt 
herself  surrounded  and  possessed  by  the  glow  of  his  passionate 
faith.  The  chill  doubts  all  melted  away  ;  she  was  subdued 
by  the  sense  of  something  unspeakably  great  to  which  she 
was  being  called  by  a  strong  being  who  roused  a  new  strength 
within  herself.  In  a  voice  that  was  like  a  low,  prayerful  cry, 
she  said,  — 

"  Father,  I  will  be  guided.     Teach  me  !     I  will  go  back." 

Almost  unconsciously  she  sank  on  her  knees.  Savonarola 
stretched  out  his  hands  over  her;  but  feeling  would  no  longer 
pass  through  the  channel  of  speech,  and  he  was  silent. 


COMING  BACK.  33^ 


CHAPTER  XLI. 

COMING    BACK. 

"  Rise,  my  daughter,"  said  Fra  Girolamo  at  last.  "  Your 
servant  is  waiting  not  far  off  with  the  mules.  It  is  time  that 
I  should  go  onward  to  Florence." 

Romola  arose  from  her  knees.  That  silent  attitude  had  been 
a  sort  of  sacrament  to  her,  confirming  the  state  of  yearning 
passivity  on  which  she  had  newly  entered.  By  the  one  act  of 
renouncing  her  resolve  to  quit  her  husband,  her  will  seemed 
so  utterly  bruised  that  she  felt  the  need  of  direction  even  in 
small  things.  She  lifted  up  the  edge  of  her  cowl,  and  saw 
Maso  and  the  second  Dominican  standing  with  their  backs 
towards  her  on  the  edge  of  the  hill  about  ten  yards  from  her  ; 
but  she  looked  at  Savonarola  again  without  speaking,  as  if  the 
order  to  Maso  to  turn  back  must  come  from  him  and  not  from 
her. 

"  I  will  go  and  call  them,"  he  said,  answering  her  glance  of 
appeal ;  "  and  I  will  recommend  you,  my  daughter,  to  the 
Brother  who  is  with  me.  You  desire  to  put  yourself  under 
guidance,  and  to  learn  that  wisdom  which  has  been  hitherto 
as  foolishness  to  you,  A  chief  gate  of  that  wisdom  is  the 
sacrament  of  confession.  You  will  need  a  confessor,  my 
daughter,  and  I  desire  to  put  you  under  the  care  of  Fra 
Salvestro,  one  of  the  brethren  of  San  Marco,  in  whom  1  mosj 
confide." 

"  I  would  rather  have  no  guidance  but  yours,  father,"  sai< 
Roniola,  looking  anxious. 

"  My  daughter,  I  do  not  act  as  a  confessor.  The  vocation  1 
have  withdraws  me  from  offices  that  would  force  me  into 
frequent  contact  with  the  laity,  and  interfere  with  my  special 
duties." 

"  Then  shall  I  not  be  able  to  speak  to  you  in  private  ?  if  I 
waver,  if "  —  Romola  broke  off  from  rising  agitation.  She 
felt  a  sudden  alarm  lest  her  new  strength  in  renunciation 
should  vanish  if  the  immediate  personal  influence  of  Savona- 
rola vanished. 

"  My  daughter,  if  your  soul  has  need  of  the  word  in  private 


334  ROMOLA. 

from  my  lips,  you  will  let  me  know  it  through  Fra  Salvestro, 
and  I  will  see  you  in  the  sacristy  or  in  the  choir  of  San  Marco. 
And  I  will  not  cease  to  watch  over  you.  I  will  instruct  my 
brother  concerning  you,  that  he  may  guide  you  into  that  path 
of  labor  for  the  suffering  and  the  hungry  to  which  you  are 
called  as  a  daughter  of  Florence  in  these  times  of  hard  need. 
I  desire  to  behold  you  among  the  feebler  and  more  ignorant 
sisters  as  the  apple-tree  among  the  trees  of  the  forest,  so  that 
your  fairness  and  all  natural  gifts  may  be  but  as  a  lamp 
through  which  the  Divine  light  shines  the  more  purely.  I 
will  go  now  and  call  your  servant." 

When  Maso  had  been  sent  a  little  way  in  advance,  Fra 
Salvestro  came  forward,  and  Savonarola  led  Romola  towards 
him.  She  had  beforehand  felt  an  inward  shrinking  from  a 
new  guide  who  was  a  total  stranger  to  her:  but  to  have 
resisted  Savonarola's  advice  would  have  been  to  assume  an 
attitude  of  independence  at  a  moment  when  all  her  strength 
must  be  drawn  from  the  renunciation  of  independence.  And 
the  whole  bent  of  her  mind  now  was  towards  doing  what  was 
painful  rather  than  what  was  easy.  She  bowed  reverently 
to  Fra  Salvestro  before  looking  directly  at  him ;  but  when  she 
raised  her  head  and  saw  him  fully,  her  reluctance  became  a 
palpitating  doubt.  There  are  men  whose  presence  infuses 
trust  and  reverence  ;  there  are  others  to  whom  we  have  need 
to  carry  our  trust  and  reverence  ready-made  :  and  that  differ- 
ence flashed  on  Romola  as  she  ceased  to  have  Savonarola 
before  her,  and  saw  in  his  stead  Fra  Salvestro  Maruffi.  It 
was  not  that  there  was  anything  manifestly  repulsive  in  Fra 
Salvestro's  face  and  manner,  any  air  of  hypocrisy,  any  tinge 
of  coarseness ;  his  face  was  handsomer  than  Fra  Girolamo's, 
his  person  a  little  taller.  He  was  the  long-accepted  confessor 
of  many  among  the  chief  personages  in  Florence,  and  had 
therefore  had  large  experience  as  a  spiritual  director.  But 
his  face  had  the  vacillating  expression  of  a  mind  unable  to 
concentrate  itself  strongly  in  the  channel  of  one  great  emo 
tion  or  belief  —  an  expression  which  is  fatal  to  influence  over 
an  ardent  nature  like  Romola's.  Such  an  expression  is  not 
the  stamp  of  insincerity,  it  is  the  stamp  simply  of  a  shallow 
soul,  which  will  often  be  found  sincerely  striving  to  till  a  high 
vocation,  sincerely  composing  its  countenance  to  the  utterance 
of  sublime  formulas,  but  finding  the  muscles  twitch  or  relax 
in  spite  of  belief,  as  prose  insists  on  coming  instead  of  poetry 
to  tlie  man  who  has  not  the  divine  frenzy.  Fra  Salvestro  had 
a  pecular  liability  to  visions,  dependent  apparently  on  a  con- 


COMING  BACK.  335 

stitution  given  to  somnambulism.  Savonarola  believed  in  the 
supernatural  character  of  these  visions,  while  Fra  Salvestro 
himself  had  originally  resisted  such  an  interpretation  of 
them,  and  had  even  rebuked  Savonarola  for  his  prophetic 
preaching :  another  proof,  if  one  were  wanted,  that  the  rela- 
tive greatness  of  men  is  not  to  be  gauged  by  their  tendency 
to  disbelieve  the  superstitions  of  their  age.  For  of  these  two 
there  can  be  no  question  which  was  the  great  man  and  which 
the  small. 

The  difference  between  them  was  measured  very  accurately 
by  the  change  in  Romola's  feeling  as  Fra  Salvestro  began  to 
address  her  in  words  of  exhortation  and  encouragement. 
After  her  first  angry  resistance  of  Savonarola  had  passed 
away,  she  had  lost  all  remembrance  of  the  old  dread  lest  any 
influence  should  drag  her  within  the  circle  of  fanaticism  and 
sour  monkish  piety.  But  now  again,  the  chill  breath  of  that 
dread  stole  over  her.  It  could  have  no  decisive  effect  against 
the  impetus  her  mind  had  just  received ;  it  was  only  like  the 
closing  of  the  gray  clouds  over  the  sunrise,  which  made  her 
returning  path  monotonous  and  sombre. 

And  perhaps  of  all  sombre  paths  that  on  which  we  go  back 
after  treading  it  with  a  strong  resolution  is  the  one  that  most 
severely  tests  the  fervor  of  renunciation.  As  they  re-entered 
the  city  gates  the  light  snow-flakes  fell  about  them ;  and  as 
the  gray  sister  walked  hastily  homeward  from  the  Piazza  di 
San  Marco,  and  trod  the  bridge  again,  and  turned  in  at  the 
large  door  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  her  footsteps  were  marked 
darkly  on  the  thin  carpet  of  snow,  and  her  cowl  fell  laden  and 
damp  about  her  face. 

She  went  up  to  her  room,  threw  off  her  serge,  destroyed  the 
parting  letters,  replaced  all  her  precious  trifles,  unbound  her 
hair,  and  put  on  her  usual  black  dress.  Instead  of  taking  a 
long  exciting  journey,  she  was  to  sit  down  in  her  usual  place. 
The  snow  fell  against  the  windows,  and  she  was  alone. 

She  felt  the  dreariness,  yet  her  courage  was  high,  like  that 
of  a  seeker  who  has  come  on  new  signs  of  gold.  She  was 
going  to  thread  life  by  a  fresh  clew.  She  had  thrown  all  the 
energy  of  her  will  into  renunciation.  The  empty  tabernacle 
remained  locked,  and  she  placed  Dino's  crucifix  outside  it. 

Nothing  broke  the  outward  monotony  of  her  solitary  home, 
till  the  night  came  like  a  white  ghost  at  the  windows.  Yet  it 
was  the  most  memorable  Christmas  Eve  in  her  life  to  Roinola, 
this  of  1494. 


BOOK    III. 
CHAPTER  XLII. 

ROMOLA    IN    HER    PLACE. 

It  was  the  thirtieth  of  October,  1496.  The  sky  that  morn- 
ing was  clear  enough,  and  there  was  a  pleasant  autumnal 
breeze.  But  the  Florentines  just  then  thought  very  little 
about  the  land  breezes :  they  were  thinking  of  the  gales  at 
sea,  which  seemed  to  be  uniting  with  all  other  powers  to  dis- 
prove the  Frate's  declaration  that  Heaven  took  special  care  of 
Florence. 

For  those  terrible  gales  had  driven  away  from  the  coast  of 
Leghorn  certain  ships  from  Marseilles,  freighted  with  soldiery 
and  corn ;  and  Florence  was  in  the  direst  need,  first  of  food, 
and  secondly  of  fighting  men.  Pale  Famine  was  in  her  streets, 
and  her  territory  was  threatened  on  all  its  borders. 

For  the  French  king,  that  new  Charlemagne,  who  had 
entered  Italy  in  anticipatory  triumph,  and  had  conquered 
Naples  without  the  least  trouble,  had  gone  away  again  fifteen 
months  ago,  and  was  even,  it  was  feared,  in  his  grief  for 
the  loss  of  a  new-born  son,  losing  the  languid  intention  of 
coming  back  again  to  redress  grievances  and  set  the  Church 
in  order.  A  league  had  been  formed  against  him  —  a  Holy 
League,  with  Pope  Borgia  at  its  head  —  to  "  drive  out  the 
barbarians,"  who  still  garrisoned  the  fortress  of  Naples.  That 
had  a  patriotic  sound ;  but  looked  at  more  closely,  the  Holy 
League  seemed  very  much  like  an  agreement  among  certain 
wolves  to  drive  away  all  other  wolves,  and  then  to  see  which 
among  themselves  could  snatch  the  largest  share  of  the  prey. 
And  there  was  a  general  disposition  to  regard  Florence  not  as 
a  fellow-wolf,  but  rather  as  a  desirable  carcass.  Florence, 
therefore,  of  all  the  chief  Italian  States,  had  alone  declined  to 
join  the  League,  adhering  still  to  the  French  alliance. 

She  had  declined  at  her  peril.  At  this  moment  Pisa,  still 
fighting  savagely  f'or  liberty,  was  being  encouraged  not  only 


ROMOLA   IN  HER  PLACE.  337 

by  strong  forces  from  Venice  and  Milan,  but  by  the  presence 
of  the  German  Emperor  Maximilian,  who  had  been  invited  by 
the  League,  and  was  joining  the  Pisans  with  such  troops  as 
he  had  in  the  attempt  to  get  possession  of  Leghorn,  while  the 
coast  was  invested  by  Venetian  and  Genoese  ships.  And  if 
Leghorn  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  woe  to 
Florence  !  For  if  that  one  outlet  towards  the  sea  were  closed, 
hedged  in  as  she  was  on  the  land  b}^  the  bitter  ill-will  of  the 
Pope  and  the  jealousy  of  smaller  States,  how  could  succors 
reach  her  ? 

The  government  of  Florence  had  shown  a  great  heart  in 
this  urgent  need,  meeting  losses  and  defeats  with  vigorous 
effort,  raising  fresh  money,  raising  fresh  soldiers,  but  not  neg- 
lecting the  good  old  method  of  Italian  defence  —  conciliatory 
embassies.  And  while  the  scarcity  of  food  was  every  day 
becoming  greater,  they  had  resolved,  in  opposition  to  old 
precedent,  not  to  shut  out  the  starving  country  people,  and 
the  mendicants  driven  from  the  gates  of  other  cities,  who 
came  flocking  to  Florence  like  birds  from  a  land  of  snow. 

These  acts  of  a  government  in  which  the  disciples  of 
Savonarola  made  the  strongest  element  were  not  allowed  to 
pass  without  criticism.  The  disaffected  were  plentiful,  and 
they  saw  clearly  that  the  government  took  the  worst  course 
for  the  public  welfare.  Florence  ought  to  join  the  League 
and  make  common  cause  with  the  other  great  Italian  States, 
instead  of  drawing  down  their  hostility  by  a  futile  adherence 
to  a  foreign  ally.  Florence  ought  to  take  care  of  her  own 
citizens,  instead  of  opening  her  gates  to  famine  and  pestilence 
in  the  shape  of  starving  contadini  and  alien  mendicants. 

Every  day  the  distress  became  sharper :  every  day  the  mur- 
murs became  louder.  And,  to  crown  the  difficulties  of  the 
government,  for  a  month  and  more  —  in  obedience  to  a  man- 
date from  Rome  —  Fra  Girolamo  had  ceased  to  preach.  But 
on  the  arrival  of  the  terrible  news  that  the  ships  from  Mar- 
seilles had  been  driven  back,  and  that  no  corn  was  coming, 
the  need  for  the  voice  that  could  infuse  faith  and  patience  into 
the  people  became  too  imperative  to  be  resisted.  In  defiance 
of  the  papal  mandate  the  Signoria  requested  Savonarola  to 
preach.  And  two  days  ago  he  had  mounted  again  the  pulpit 
of  the  Duomo,  and  had  told  the  people  only  to  wait  and  be 
steadfast  and  the  Divine  help  would  certainly  come. 

It  was  a  bold  sermon :  he  consented  to  have  his  frock 
stripped  off  him  if,  when  Florence  persevered  in  fulfilling  the 
duties  of  piety  and  citizenship,  God  did  not  come  to  her  rescue. 


338  ROMOLA. 

Yet  at  present,  on  this  morning  of  the  thirtieth,  there  were 
no  signs  of  rescue.  Perhaps  if  the  precious  Tabernacle  of  the 
Madonna  dell'  Inipruneta  were  brought  into  Florence  and  car- 
ried in  devout  procession  to  the  Duonio,  that  Mother,  rich  in 
sorrows  and  therefore  in  mercy,  would  plead  for  the  suffering 
city  ?  For  a  century  and  a  half  there  were  records  how  the 
Florentines,  suffering  from  drought,  or  flood,  or  famine,  or 
pestilence,  or  the  threat  of  wars,  had  fetched  the  potent  image 
within  their  walls,  and  had  found  deliverance.  And  grateful 
honor  had  been  done  to  her  and  her  ancient  church  of 
L'Impruneta ;  the  high  house  of  Buondelmonti,  patrons  of 
the  church,  had  to  guard  her  hidden  image  with  bare  sword; 
wealth  had  been  poured  out  for  prayers  at  her  shrine,  for 
chantings,  and  chapels,  and  ever-burning  lights ;  and  lands 
had  been  added,  till  there  was  much  quarrelling  for  the  privi- 
lege of  serving  her.  The  Florentines  were  deeply  convinced 
of  her  graciousness  to  them,  so  that  the  sight  of  her  tabernacle 
within  their  walls  was  like  the  parting  of  the  cloud,  and  the 
proverb  ran,  that  the  Florentines  had  a  Madonna  who  would 
do  what  they  pleased. 

When  were  they  in  more  need  of  her  pleading  pity  than 
now  ?  And  already,  the  evening  before,  the  tabernacle  con^ 
taining  the  miraculous  hidden  image  had  been  brought  with 
high  and  reverend  escort  from  L'Impruneta,  the  privileged 
spot  six  miles  beyond  the  gate  of  San  Piero  that  looks  towards 
Eome,  and  had  been  deposited  in  the  church  of  San  Gaggio, 
outside  the  gate,  whence  it  was  to  be  fetched  in  solemn  pro- 
cession by  all  the  fraternities,  trades,  and  authorities  of 
Florence. 

But  the  Pitying  Mother  had  not  yet  entered  within  the 
walls,  and  the  morning  arose  on  unchanged  misery  and  de- 
spondency. Pestilence  was  hovering  in  the  track  of  famine. 
Not  only  the  hospitals  were  full,  but  the  courtyards  of  private 
houses  had  been  turned  into  refuges  and  infirmaries ;  and  still 
there  was  unsheltered  want.  And  early  this  morning,  as 
usual,  members  of  the  various  fraternities  who  made  it  part 
of  their  duty  to  bury  the  unfriended  dead,  were  bearing  away 
the  corpses  that  had  sunk  by  the  wayside.  As  usual,  sweet 
womanly  forms,  with  the  refined  air  and  carriage  of  the  well- 
born, but  in  the  plainest  garb,  were  moving  about  the  streets 
on  their  daily  errands  of  tending  the  sick  and  relieving  the 
hungry. 

One  of  these  forms  was  easily  distinguishable  as  Eomola 
de'  Bardi.     Clad  in  the  simplest  garment  of  black  serge,  with 


ROMOLA   IN  HER  PLACE.  339 

a  plain  piece  of  black  drapery  drawn  over  her  head,  so  as  to 
jiide  all  her  hair,  except  the  bands  of  gold  that  rippled  apart 
on  her  brow,  she  was  advancing  from  the  Ponte  Vecchio 
towards  the  Por'  Santa  Maria  —  the  street  in  a  direct  line 
with  the  bridge  —  when  she  found  her  way  obstructed  by  the 
pausing  of  a  bier,  which  was  being  carried  by  members  of  the 
company  of  San  Jacopo  del  Popolo,  in  search  for  the  unburied 
dead.  The  brethren  at  the  head  of  the  bier  were  stooping  to 
examine  something,  while  a  group  of  idle  workmen,  with 
features  paled  and  sharpened  by  hunger,  were  clustering 
around  and  all  talking  at  once. 

*'  He's  dead,  I  tell  you  !  Messer  Domeneddio  has  loved  him 
well  enough  to  take  him." 

"  Ah,  and  it  would  be  well  for  us  all  if  we  could  have  our 
legs  stretched  out  and  go  with  our  heads  two  or  three  bracci 
foremost !  It's  ill  standing  upright  with  hunger  to  prop 
you." 

"  Well,  well,  he's  an  old  fellow.  Death  has  got  a  poor  bar- 
gain.    Life's  had  the  best  of  him." 

"  And  no  Florentine,  ten  to  one !  A  beggar  turned  out  of 
Siena.  San  Giovanni  defend  us  !  They've  no  need  of  soldiers 
to  fight  us.     They  send  us  an  army  of  starving  men." 

"  No,  no !  This  man  is  one  of  the  prisoners  turned  out  of 
the  Stinche.  I  know  by  the  gray  patch  where  the  prison 
badge  was." 

"  Keep  quiet !  Lend  a  hand  !  Don't  you  see  the  brethren 
are  going  to  lift  him  on  the  bier  ?  " 

''  It's  likely  he's  alive  enough  if  he  could  only  look  it.  The 
soul  may  be  inside  him  if  it  had  only  a  drop  of  vernaccia  to 
warm  it." 

"  In  truth,  I  think  he  is  not  dead,"  said  one  of  the  brethren, 
when  they  had  lifted  him  on  the  bier.  "  He  has  perhaps  only 
sunk  down  for  waiit  of  food." 

"  Let  me  try  to  give  him  some  wine,"  said  Romola,  coming 
forward.  She  loosened  the  small  flask  which  she  carried  at 
her  belt,  and,  leaning  towards  the  prostrate  body,  with  a  deft 
hand  she  applied  a  small  ivory  implement  between  the  teeth, 
and  poured  into  the  mouth  a  few  drops  of  wine.  The  stim- 
ulus acted :  the  wine  was  evidently  swallowed.  She  poured 
more,  till  the  head  was  moved  a  little  towards  her,  and  the 
eyes  of  the  old  man  opened  full  upon  her  with  the  vague  look 
of  returning  consciousness. 

Then  for  the  first  time  a  sense  of  complete  recognition 
came  over  Romola.     Those  wild  dark  eyes  opening  in  the 


340  ROMOLA. 

sallow,  deep-lined  face,  with  the  white  beard,  which  was  now 
long  again,  were  like  an  unmistakable  signature  to  a  remem- 
bered handwriting.  The  light  of  two  summers  had  not  made 
that  image  any  fainter  in  Komola's  memory  :  the  image  of 
the  escaped  prisoner,  whom  she  had  seen  in  the  Duomo  the 
day  when  Tito  first  wore  the  armor  —  at  whose  grasp  Tito 
was  pale  with  terror  in  the  strange  sketch  she  had  seen  in 
Piero's  studio.  A  wretched  tremor  and  palpitation  seized 
her.  Now  at  last,  perhaps,  she  was  going  to  know  some 
secret  which  might  be  more  bitter  than  all  that  had  gone 
before.  She  felt  an  impulse  to  dart  away  as  from  a  sight  of 
horror ;  and  again,  a  more  imperious  need  to  keep  close  by 
the  side  of  this  old  man  whom,  the  divination  of  keen  feeling 
told  her,  her  husband  had  injured.  In  the  very  instant  of 
this  conflict  she  still  leaned  towards  him  and  kept  her  right 
hand  ready  to  administer  more  wine,  while  her  left  was 
passed  under  his  neck.  Her  hands  trembled,  but  their  habit 
of  soothing  helpfulness  would  have  served  to  guide  them 
without  the  direction  of  her  thought. 

Baldassarre  was  looking  at  her  for  the  first  time.  The  close 
seclusion  in  which  Romola's  trouble  had  kept  her  in  the 
weeks  preceding  her  flight  and  his  arrest,  had  denied  him  the 
opportunity  he  had  sought  of  seeing  the  Wife  who  lived  in 
the  Via  de'  Bardi :  and  at  this  moment  the  descriptions  he 
had  heard  of  the  fair  golden-haired  woman  were  all  gone,  like 
yesterday's  waves. 

"  Will  it  not  be  well  to  carry  him  to  the  steps  of  San 
Stefano  ?  "  said  Romola.  "  We  shall  cease  then  to  stop  up 
the  street,  and  you  can  go  on  your  way  with  your  bier." 

They  had  only  to  move  onward  for  about  thirty  yards  be- 
fore reaching  the  steps  of  San  Stefano,  and  by  this  time 
Baldassarre  was  able  himself  to  make  some  efforts  towards 
getting  off  the  bier,  and  propping  himself  on  the  steps  against 
the  church  doorway.  The  charitable  brethren  passed  on,  but 
the  group  of  interested  spectators,  who  had  nothing  to  do, 
and  much  to  say,  had  considerably  increased.  The  feeling 
towards  the  old  man  was  not  so  entirely  friendly  now  it  was 
quite  certain  that  he  was  alive,  but  the  respect  inspired  by 
Komola's  presence  caused  the  passing  remarks  to  be  made  in  a 
rather  more  subdued  tone  than  before. 

"  Ah,  they  gave  him  his  morsel  every  day  in  the  Stinche  — 
that's  why  he  can't  do  so  well  withoiit  it.  You  and  I,  Cecco, 
know  better  what  it  is  to  go  to  bed  fasting." 

"  Gnaffe !  that's  why  the  Magnificent  Eight   liave  turned 


ROMOLA   IN  HER  PLACE.  341 

out  some  of  the  prisoners,  that  they  may  shelter  honest  people 
instead.  But  if  every  thief  is  to  be  brought  to  life  with  good 
wine  and  wheaten  bread,  we  Ciompi  had  better  go  and  fill 
ourselves  in  Arno  while  the  water's  plenty." 

Romola  had  seated  herself  on  the  steps  by  Baldassarre,  and 
was  saying,  "  Can  you  eat  a  little  bread  now  ?  perhaps  by  and 
by  you  will  be  able,  if  I  leave  it  with  you.  I  must  go  on, 
because  I  have  promised  to  be  at  the  hospital.  But  I  will 
come  back  if  you  will  wait  here,  and  then  I  will  take  you  to 
some  shelter.  Do  you  understand  ?  Will  you  wait  ?  I  will 
come  back." 

He  looked  dreamily  at  her,  and  repeated  her  words,  "  come 
back."  It  was  no  wonder  that  his  mind  was  enfeebled  by  his 
bodily  exhaustion,  but  she  hoped  that  he  apprehended  her 
meaning.  She  opened  her  basket,  which  was  filled  with 
pieces  of  soft  bread,  and  put  one  of  the  pieces  into  his  hand. 

"Do  you  keep  your  bread  for  chose  that  can't  swallow, 
madonna  ?  "  said  a  rough-looking  fellow,  in  a  red  night-cap, 
who  had  elbowed  his  way  into  the  inmost  circle  of  spectators 
—  a  circle  that  was  pressing  rather  closely  on  Romola. 

"If  anybody  isn't  hungry,"  said  another,  "I  say,  let  him 
alone.  He's  better  off  than  people  who've  got  craving 
stomachs  and  no  breakfast." 

"  Yes,  indeed ;  if  a  man's  a  mind  to  die,  it's  a  time  to 
encourage  him,  instead  of  making  him  come  back  to  life 
against  his  will.     Dead  men  want  no  trencher." 

"Oh,  you  don't  understand  the  Prate's  charity,"  said  a 
young  man  in  an  excellent  cloth  tunic,  whose  face  showed  no 
signs  of  want.  "  The  Frate  has  been  preaching  to  the  birds, 
like  Saint  Anthony,  and  he's  been  telling  the  hawks  they 
were  made  to  feed  the  sparrows,  as  every  good  Florentine 
citizen  was  made  to  feed  six  starving  beggar-men  from  Arezzo 
or  Bologna.  Madonna,  there,  is  a  pious  Piagnone  :  she's  not 
going  to  throw  away  her  good  bread  on  honest  citizens  who've 
got  all  the  Frate's  prophecies  to  swallow." 

"Come,  madonna,"  said  he  of  the  red  cap,  "the  old  thief 
doesn't  eat  the  bread,  you  see :  you'd  better  try  us.  We  fast 
so  much,  we're  half  saints  already." 

The  circle  had  narrowed  till  the  coarse  men  —  most  of  them, 
gaunt  from  privation  —  had  left  hardly  any  margin  round 
Romola.  She  had  been  taking  from  her  basket  a  small  horn 
cup,  into  which  she  put  the  piece  of  bread  and  just  mois- 
tened it  with  wine ;  and  hitherto  she  had  not  appeared  to 
heed  them.     But  now  she  rose  to  her  feet,  and  looked  round 


342  ROMOLA. 

at  them.  Instinctively  the  men  who  were  nearest  to  her 
pushed  backward  a  little,  as  if  their  rude  nearness  were  the 
fault  of  those  behind.  Romola  held  out  the  basket  of  bread 
to  the  man  in  the  night-cap,  looking  at  him  without  any 
reproach  in  her  glance,  as  she  said,  — 

"  Hunger  is  hard  to  bear,  I  know,  and  you  have  the  power 
to  take  this  bread  if  you  will.  It  was  saved  for  sick  women 
and  children.  You  are  strong  men ;  but  if  you  do  not 
choose  to  suffer  because  you  are  strong,  you  have  the  power 
to  take  everything  from  the  weak.  You  can  take  the  bread 
from  this  basket ;  but  I  shall  watch  by  this  old  man ;  I 
shall  resist  your  taking  the  bread  from  Aiwi." 

For  a  few  moments  there  was  perfect  silence,  while  Romola 
looked  at  the  faces  before  her,  and  held  out  the  basket  of 
bread.  Her  own  pale  face  had  the  slightly  pinched  look  and 
the  deepening  of  the  eye-socket  which  indicate  unusual  fast- 
ing in  the  habitually  temperate,  and  the  large  direct  gaze  of 
her  hazel  eyes  was  all  the  more  impressive. 

The  man  in  the  night-cap  looked  rather  silly,  and  backed, 
thrusting  his  elbow  into  his  neighbor's  ribs  with  an  air  of 
moral  rebuke.  The  backing  was  general,  every  one  wishing 
to  imply  that  he  had  been  pushed  forward  against  his  will ; 
and  the  young  man  in  the  fine  cloth  tunic  had  disappeared. 

But  at  this  moment  the  armed  servitors  of  the  Signoria, 
who  had  begun  to  patrol  the  line  of  streets  through  which 
the  procession  was  to  pass,  came  up  to  disperse  the  group 
which  was  obstructing  the  narrow  street.  The  man  addressed 
as  Cecco  retreated  from  a  threatening  mace  up  the  church 
steps,  and  said  to  Romola,  in  a  respectful  tone,  — 

"Madonna,  if  you  want  to  go  on  your  errands,  I'll  take 
care  of  the  old  man." 

Cecco  was  a  wild-looking  figure  :  a  very  ragged  tunic,  made 
shaggy  and  variegated  by  cloth-dust  and  clinging  fragments 
of  wool,  gave  relief  to  a  pair  of  bare  bony  arms  and  a  long 
sinewy  neck  ;  his  square  jaw  shaded  by  a  bristly  black  beard, 
his  bridgeless  nose  and  low  forehead,  made  his  face  look  as  if 
it  had  been  crushed  down  for  purposes  of  packing,  and  a 
narrow  piece  of  red  rag  tied  over  his  ears  seemed  to  assist  in 
the  compression.  Romola  looked  at  him  with  some  hesita- 
tion. 

"  Don't  distrust  me,  madonna,"  said  Cecco,  who  understood 
her  look  perfectly ;  ''  I  am  not  so  pretty  as  you,  but  I'vfe  got 
an  old  mother  who  eats  my  porridge  for  me.  What !  there's 
a  heart  inside  me,  and  I've  bought  a  candle  for  the  most  Holy 


THE   UNSEEN  MADONNA.  843 

Virgin  before  now.  Besides,  see  there,  the  old  fellow  is  eat- 
ing his  sop.  He's  hale  enough :  he'll  be  on  his  legs  as  well  as 
the  best  of  us  by  and  by." 

"  Thank  you  for  offering  to  take  care  of  him,  friend,"  said 
Romola,  rather  penitent  for  her  doubting  glance.  Then  lean- 
ing to  Baldassarre,  she  said,  "Pray  wait  for  me  till  I  come 
again." 

He  assented  with  a  slight  movement  of  the  head  and  hand, 
and  Romola  went  on  her  way  towards  the  hospital  of  San 
Matteo,  in  the  Piazza  di  San  Marco. 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

THE    UNSEEN    MADONNA. 

In  returning  from  the  hospital,  more  than  an  hour  later, 
Romola  took  a  different  road,  making  a  wider  circuit  towards 
the  river,  which  she  reached  at  some  distance  from  the  Ponte 
Vecchio.  She  turned  her  steps  towards  that  bridge,  intend- 
ing to  hasten  to  San  Stefano  in  search  of  Baldassarre.  She 
dreaded  to  know  more  about  him,  yet  she  felt  as  if,  in  forsak- 
ing him,  she  would  be  forsaking  some  near  claim  upon  her. 

But  when  she  approached  the  meeting  of  the  roads  where 
the  Por'  Santa  Maria  would  be  on  her  right  hand  and  the 
Ponte  Vecchio  on  her  left,  she  found  herself  involved  in  a 
crowd  who  suddenly  fell  on  their  knees ;  and  she  immediately 
knelt  with  them.  The  Cross  was  passing  —  the  Great  Cross 
of  the  Duomo  —  which  headed  the  procession.  Romola  was 
later  than  she  had  expected  to  be,  and  now  she  must  wait  till 
the  procession  had  passed.  As  she  rose  from  her  knees,  when 
the  Cross  had  disappeared,  the  return  to  a  standing  posture, 
with  nothing  to  do  but  gaze,  made  her  more  conscious  of  her 
fatigue  than  she  had  been  while  she  had  been  walking  and 
occupied.     A  shopkeeper  by  her  side  said,  — 

"  Madonna  Romola,  you  will  be  weary  of  standing :  Gian. 
Fantoni  will  be  glad  to  give  you  a  seat  in  his  house.  Here  is 
his  door  close  at  hand.  Let  me  open  it  for  you.  What !  he 
loves  God  and  the  Frate  as  we  do.     His  house  is  yours." 

Romola  was  accustomed  now  to  be  addressed  in  this  frater- 
nal way  by  ordinary  citizens,  whose  faces  were  familiar  to 
her  from  her  having  seen  them  constantly  in   the   Duomo. 


344  ROMOLA. 

The  idea  of  home  had  come  to  be  identified  for  her  less  with 
the  house  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  where  she  sat  in  frequent 
loneliness,  than  with  the  towered  circuit  of  Florence,  where 
there  was  hardly  a  turn  of  the  streets  at  which  she  was  not 
greeted  with  looks  of  appeal  or  of  friendliness.  She  was 
glad  enough  to  pass  through  the  open  door  on  her  right  hand 
and  be  led  by  the  fraternal  hose-vender  to  an  upstairs-window, 
where  a  stout  woman  with  three  children,  all  in  the  plain 
garb  of  Piagnoni,  made  a  place  for  her  with  much  reverence 
above  the  bright  hanging  draperies.  From  this  corner  station 
she  could  see,  not  only  the  procession  pouring  in  solemn 
slowness  between  the  lines  of  houses  on  the  Ponte  Vecchio, 
but  also  the  river  and  the  Lung'  Arno  on  towards  the  bridge 
of  the  Santa  Trinita. 

In  sadness  and  in  stillness  came  the  slow  procession.  Not 
even  a  wailing  chant  broke  the  silent  appeal  for  mercy  :  there 
was  only  the  tramp  of  footsteps,  and  the  faint  sweep  of 
woollen  garments.  They  were  young  footsteps  that  were 
passing  when  Romola  first  looked  from  the  window  —  a  long 
train  of  the  Florentine  youth,  bearing  high  in  the  midst  of 
them  the  white  image  of  the  youthful  Jesus,  with  a  golden 
glory  above  his  head,  standing  by  the  tall  cross  where  the 
thorns  and  the  nails  lay  ready. 

After  that  train  of  fresh  beardless  faces  came  the  mysteri- 
ous-looking Companies  of  Discipline,  bound  by  secret  ^rules  to 
self-chastisement,  and  devout  praise,  and  special  acts  of  piety ; 
all  wearing  a  garb  which  concealed  the  whole  head  and  face 
except  the  eyes.  Every  one  knew  that  these  mysterious 
forms  were  Florentine  citizens  of  various  ranks,  who  might 
be  seen  at  ordinary  times  going  about  the  business  of  the  shop, 
the  counting-house,  or  the  State ;  but  no  member  now  was 
discernible  as  sou,  husband,  or  father.  They  had  dropped 
their  personality,  and  walked  as  symbols  of  a  common  vow. 
Each  company  had  its  color  and  its  badge,  but  the  garb  of 
all  was  a  complete  shroud,  and  left  no  expression  but  that  of 
fellowship. 

In  comparison  with  them,  the  multitude  of  monks  seemed 
to  be  strongly  distinguished  individuals,  in  spite  of  the  common 
tonsure  and  the  common  frock.  First  came  a  white  stream  of 
reformed  Benedictines  ;  and  then  a  much  longer  stream  of  the 
Frati  Minori,  or  Franciscans,  in  that  age  all  clad  in  gray,  with 
the  knotted  cord  round  their  waists,  and  some  of  them  with 
the  zoccoli,  or  wooden  sandals,  below  their  bare  feet ;  —  per- 
haps  the   most  numerous  order  in  Florence,   owning  many 


THE   UNSEEN  MADONNA.  345 

zealous  members  who  loved  mankind  and  hated  the  Domini- 
cans. And  after  the  gray  came  the  black  of  the  Augustinians 
of  San  Spirito,  with  more  cultured  human  faces  above  it  — 
men  who  had  inherited  the  library  of  Boccaccio,  and  had 
made  the  most  learned  company  in  Florence  when  learning 
was  rarer ;  then  the  white  over  dark  of  the  Carmelites ;  and 
then  again  the  unmixed  black  of  the  Servites,  that  famous 
Florentine  order  founded  by  seven  merchants  who  forsook 
their  gains  to  adore  the  Divine  Mother. 

And  now  the  hearts  of  all  on-lookers  began  to  beat  a  li  ttle 
faster,  either  with  hatred  or  with  love,  for  there  was  a  stream 
of  black  and  white  coming  over  the  bridge  —  of  black  mantles 
over  white  scapularies ;  and  every  one  knew  that  the  Domini- 
cans were  coming.  Those  of  Fiesole  passed  first.  One  black 
mantle  parted  by  white  after  another,  one  tonsured  head  after 
another,  and  still  expectation  was  suspended.  They  were 
very  coarse  mantles,  all  of  them,  and  many  were  threadbare, 
if  not  ragged ;  for  the  Prior  of  San  Marco  had  reduced  the 
fraternities  under  his  rule  to  the  strictest  poverty  and  disci- 
pline. But  in  the  long  line  of  black  and  white  there  was  at 
last  singled  out  a  mantle  only  a  little  more  worn  than  the 
rest,  with  a  tonsured  head  above  it  which  might  not  have 
appeared  supremely  remarkable  to  a  stranger  who  had  not 
seen  it  on  bronze  medals,  with  the  sword  of  God  as  its  obverse ; 
or  surrounded  by  an  armed  guard  on  the  way  to  the  Duomo ; 
or  transfigured  by  the  inward  flame  of  the  orator  as  it  looked 
round  on  a  rapt  multitude. 

As  the  approach  of  Savonarola  was  discerned,  none  dared 
conspicuously  to  break  the  stillness  by  a  sound  which  would 
rise  above  the  solemn  tramp  of  footsteps  and  the  faint  sweep 
of  garments ;  nevertheless  his  ear,  as  well  as  other  ears, 
caught  a  mingled  sound  of  slow  hissing  that  longed  to  be 
curses,  and  murmurs  that  longed  to  be  blessings.  Perhaps  it 
was  the  sense  that  the  hissing  predominated  which  made  two 
or  three  of  his  disciples  in  the  foreground  of  the  crowd,  at  the 
meeting  of  the  roads,  fall  on  their  knees  as  if  something 
divine  were  passing.  The  movement  of  silent  homage  spread : 
it  went  along  the  sides  of  the  streets  like  a  subtle  shock, 
leaving  some  unmoved,  while  it  made  the  most  bend  the  knee 
and  bow  the  head.  But  the  hatred,  too,  gathered  a  more 
intense  expression ;  and  as  Savonarola  passed  up  the  Por' 
Santa  Maria,  Romola  could  see  that  some  one  at  an  upper 
window  spat  upon  him. 

Monks  again  —  Frati  Umiliati,  or  Humbled  Brethren,  from 


346  ROMOLA. 

Ognissanti,  with  a  glorious  tradition  of  being  the  earliest 
workers  in  the  wool-trade;  and  again  more  monks  —  Valloni- 
brosan  and  other  varieties  of  Benedictines,  reminding  the 
instructed  eye  by  niceties  of  form  and  color  that  in  ages  of 
abuse,  long  ago,  reformers  had  arisen  who  had  marked  a  change 
of  spirit  by  a  change  of  garb ;  till  at  last  the  shaven  crowns 
were  at  an  end,  and  there  came  the  train  of  untonsured, 
secular  priests. 

Then  followed  the  twenty-one  incorporated  Arts  of  Florence 
in  long  array,  with  their  banners  floating  above  them  in  proud 
declaration  that  the  bearers  had  their  distinct  functions,  from 
the  bakers  of  bread  to  the  judges  and  notaries.  And  then  all 
the  secondary  officers  of  State,  beginning  with  the  less  and 
going  on  to  the  greater,  till  the  line  of  secularities  was  broken 
by  the  Canons  of  the  Duomo,  carrying  a  sacred  relic  —  the 
very  head,  enclosed  in  silver,  of  San  Zenobio,  immortal  bishop 
of  Florence,  whose  virtues  were  held  to  have  saved  the  city 
perhaps  a  thousand  years  before. 

Here  was  the  nucleus  of  the  procession.  Behind  the  relic 
came  the  archbishop  in  gorgeous  cope,  with  canopy  held  above 
him ;  and  after  him  the  mysterious  hidden  Image  —  hidden 
first  by  rich  curtains  of  brocade  enclosing  an  outer  painted 
tabernacle,  but  within  this,  by  the  more  ancient  tabernacle 
which  had  never  been  opened  in  the  memory  of  living  men, 
or  the  fathers  of  living  men.  In  that  inner  shrine  was  the 
image  of  the  Pitying  Mother,  found  ages  ago  in  the  soil  of 
L'Impruneta,  uttering  a  cry  as  the  spade  struck  it.  Hitherto 
the  unseen  Image  had  hardly  ever  been  carried  to  the  Duomo 
without  having  rich  gifts  borne  before  it.  There  was  no  re- 
citing the  list  of  precious  offerings  made  by  emulous  men  and 
communities,  especially  of  veils  and  curtains  and  mantles. 
But  the  richest  of  all  these,  it  was  said,  had  been  given  by  a 
poor  abbess  and  her  nuns,  who,  having  no  money  to  buy  mate- 
rials, wove  a  mantle  of  gold  brocade  with  their  prayers, 
embroidered  it  and  adorned  it  with  their  prayers,  and,  finally, 
saw  their  work  presented  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  the  great 
Piazza  by  two  beautiful  youths  who  spread  out  white  wings 
and  vanished  in  the  blue. 

But  to-day  there  were  no  gifts  carried  before  the  tabernacle  : 
no  donations  were  to  be  given  to-day  except  to  the  poor. 
That  had  been  the  advice  of  Fra  Girolamo,  whose  preaching 
never  insisted  on  gifts  to  the  invisible  powers,  but  only  on 
help  to  visible  need ;  and  altars  had  been  raised  at  various 
points  in  front  of  the  churches,  on  which  the  oblations  for 


THE   UNSEEN  MADONNA.  Ml 

the  poor  were  deposited.  Not  eren  a  torch  was  carried. 
Surely  the  hidden  Mother  cared  less  for  torches  and  brocade 
than  for  the  wail  of  the  hungry  people.  Florence  was  in 
extremity :  she  had  done  her  utmost,  and  could  only  wait  for 
something  divine  that  was  not  in  her  own  power. 

The  Frate  in  the  torn  mantle  had  said  that  help  would  cer- 
tainly come,  and  many  of  the  faint-hearted  were  clinging 
more  to  their  faith  in  the  Frate's  word,  than  to  their  faith  in 
the  virtues  of  the  unseen  Image.  But  there  were  not  a  few 
of  the  fierce-hearted  who  thought  with  secret  rejoicing  that  the 
Frate's  word  might  be  proved  false. 

Slowly  the  tabernacle  moved  forward,  and  knees  were  bent. 
There  was  profound  stillness ;  for  the  train  of  priests  and 
chaplains  from  L'Impruneta  stirred  no  passion  in  the  on- 
lookers. The  procession  was  about  to  close  with  the  Priors 
and  the  Gonfaloniere :  the  long  train  of  companies  and  sym- 
bols, which  have  their  silent  music  and  stir  the  mind  as  a 
chorus  stirs  it,  was  passing  out  of  sight,  and  now  a  faint 
yearning  hope  was  all  that  struggled  with  the  accustomed 
despondency. 

Romola,  whose  heart  had  been  swelling,  half  with  forebod- 
ing, half  with  that  enthusiasm  of  fellowship  which  the  life  of 
the  last  two  years  had  made  as  habitual  to  her  as  the  con- 
sciousness of  costume  to  a  vain  and  idle  woman,  gave  a  deep 
sigh,  as  at  the  end  of  some  long  mental  tension,  and  remained 
on  her  knees  for  very  languor ;  when  suddenly  there  flashed 
from  between  the  houses  on  to  the  distant  bridge  something 
bright-colored.  In  the  instant,  Romola  started  up  and 
stretched  out  her  arms,  leaning  from  the  window,  while  the 
black  drapery  fell  from  her  head,  and  the  golden  gleam  of  her 
hair  and  the  flush  in  her  face  seemed  the  effect  of  one  illu- 
mination. A  shout  arose  in  the  same  instant ;  the  last  troops 
of  the  procession  paused,  and  all  faces  were  turned  towards 
the  distant  bridge. 

But  the  bridge  was  passed  now  :  the  horseman  was  pressing 
at  full  gallop  along  by  the  Arno ;  the  sides  of  his  bay  horse, 
just  streaked  with  foam,  looked  all  white  from  swiftness  ;  his 
cap  was  flying  loose  by  his  red  becchetto,  and  he  waved  an 
olive  branch  in  his  hand.  It  was  a  messenger  —  a  messenger 
of  good  tidings  !  The  blessed  olive  branch  spoke  afar  off. 
But  the  impatient  people  could  not  wait.  They  rushed  to 
meet  the  on-comer,  and  seized  his  horse's  rein,  pushing  and 
trampling. 

And  now  Romola  could  see  that  the  horseman  was  her  hus- 


348  ROMOLA. 

band,  who  had  been  sent  to  Pisa  a  few  days  before  on  a  pri- 
vate embassy.  The  recognition  brought  no  new  flash  of  joy 
into  her  eyes.  She  had  checked  her  first  impulsive  attitude 
of  expectation ;  but  her  governing  anxiety  was  still  to  know 
what  news  of  relief  had  come  for  Florence. 

"  Good  ncAvs  !  "  "  Best  news  ! "  "  News  to  be  paid  with 
hose  (novelle  da  calze)  ! "  were  the  vague  answers  with  which 
Tito  met  the  importunities  of  the  crowd,  until  he  had  suc- 
ceeded in  pushing  on  his  horse  to  the  spot  at  the  meeting  of 
the  ways  where  the  Gonfaloniere  and  the  Priors  were  awaiting 
him.     There  he  paused,  and,  bowing  low,  said,  — 

"  Magnificent  Signori !  I  have  to  deliver  to  you  the  joyful 
news  that  the  galleys  from  France,  laden  with  corn  and  men, 
have  arrived  safely  in  the  port  of  Leghorn,  by  favor  of  a 
strong  wind,  which  kept  the  enemy's  fleet  at  a  distance." 

The  words  had  no  sooner  left  Tito's  lips  than  they  seemed 
to  vibrate  up  the  streets.  A  great  shout  rang  through  the  air, 
and  rushed  along  the  river ;  and  then  another,  and  another ; 
and  the  shouts  were  heard  spreading  along  the  line  of  the 
procession  towards  the  Duomo;  and  then  there  were  fainter 
answering  shouts,  like  the  intermediate  plash  of  distant  waves 
in  a  great  lake  whose  waters  obey  one  impulse. 

For  some  minutes  there  was  no  attempt  to  speak  further  : 
the  Signoria  themselves  lifted  up  their  caps,  and  stood  bare- 
headed in  the  presence  of  a  rescue  which  had  come  from  out- 
side the  limit  of  their  OAvn  power  —  from  that  region  of  trust 
and  resignation  which  has  been  in  all  ages  called  divine. 

At  last,  as  the  signal  was  given  to  move  forward,  Tito  said, 
with  a  smile,  — 

"  I  ought  to  say,  that  any  hose  to  be  bestowed  by  the  Mag- 
nificent Signoria  in  reward  of  these  tidings  are  due,  not  to  me, 
but  to  another  man  who  had  ridden  hard  to  bring  them,  and 
would  have  been  here  in  my  place  if  his  horse  had  not  broken 
down  just  before  he  reached  Signa.  Meo  di  Sasso  will  doubt- 
less be  here  in  an  hour  or  two,  and  may  all  the  more  justly 
claim  the  glory  of  the  messenger,  because  he  has  had  the  chief 
labor  and  has  lost  the  chief  delight." 

It  was  a  graceful  way  of  putting  a  necessary  statement,  and 
after  a  word  of  reply  from  the  Proposto^  or  spokesman  of  the 
Signoria,  this  dignified  extremity  of  the  procession  passed  on, 
and  Tito  turned  his  horse's  head  to  follow  in  its  train,  while 
the  great  bell  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  was  already  beginning 
to  swing,  and  give  a  louder  voice  to  the  people's  joy. 

In  that  moment,  when  Tito's  attention  had  ceased  to  be 


THE    VISIBLE  MADONNA.  349 

imperatively  directed,  it  might  have  been  expected  that  he 
would  look  round  and  recognize  Romola ;  but  he  was  appar- 
ently engaged  with  his  cap,  which,  now  the  eager  people  were 
leading  his  horse,  he  was  able  to  seize  and  place  on  his  head, 
while  his  right  hand  was  still  encumbered  by  the  olive  branch. 
He  had  a  becoming  air  of  lassitude  after  his  exertions ;  and 
Romola,  instead  of  making  any  effort  to  be  recognized  by  him, 
threw  her  black  drapery  over  her  head  again,  and  remained 
perfectly  quiet.  Yet  she  felt  almost  sure  that  Tito  had  seen 
her ;  he  had  the  power  of  seeing  everything  without  seeming 
to  see  it. 


CHAPTER  XLIV. 

THE   VISIBLE    MADONNA. 

The  crowd  had  no  sooner  passed  onward  than  Romola 
descended  to  the  street,  and  hastened  to  the  steps  of  San 
Stefano.  Cecco  had  been  attracted  with  the  rest  towards  the 
Piazza,  and  she  found  Baldassarre  standing  alone  against  the 
church  door,  with  the  horn  cup  in  his  hand,  waiting  for  her. 
There  was  a  striking  change  in  him  :  the  blank,  dreamy  glance 
of  a  half-returned  consciousness  had  given  place  to  a  fierceness 
which,  as  she  advanced  and  spoke  to  him,  flashed  upon  her  as 
if  she  had  been  its  object.  It  was  the  glance  of  caged  fury 
that  sees  its  prey  passing  safe  beyond  the  bars. 

Romola  started  as  the  glance  was  turned  on  her,  but  her 
immediate  thought  was  that  he  had  seen  Tito.  And  as  she 
felt  the  look  of  hatred  grating  on  her,  something  like  a  hope 
arose  that  this  man  might  be  the  criminal,  and  that  her  hus- 
band might  not  have  been  guilty  towards  him.  If  she  could 
learn  that  now,  by  bringing  Tito  face  to  face  with  him,  and 
have  her  mind  set  at  rest ! 

"  If  you  will  come  with  me,"  she  said,  "  I  can  give  you 
shelter  and  food  until  you  are  quite  rested  and  strong.  Will 
you  come  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Baldassarre,  "  I  shall  be  glad  to  get  my  strength. 
I  want  to  get  my  strength,"  he  repeated,  as  if  he  were  mutter- 
ing to  himself,  rather  than  speaking  to  her. 

"  Come !  "  she  said,  inviting  him  to  walk  by  her  side,  and 
taking  the  way  by  the  Arno  towards  the  Ponte  Rubaconte  as 
the  more  private  road. 


350  ROMOLA. 

"  I  think  you  are  not  a  Florentine,"  she  said,  presently,  as 
they  turned  on  to  the  bridge. 

He  looked  round  at  her  without  speaking.  His  suspicious 
caution  was  more  strongly  upon  him  than  usual,  just  now  that 
the  fog  of  confusion  and  oblivion  was  made  denser  by  bodily 
feebleness.  But  she  was  looking  at  him  too,  and  there  was 
something  in  her  gentle  eyes  which  at  last  compelled  him  to 
answer  her.     But  he  answered  cautiously,  — 

"  No,  I  am  no  Florentine ;  I  am  a  lonely  man." 

She  observed  his  reluctance  to  speak  to  her,  and  dared  not 
question  him  further,  lest  he  should  desire  to  quit  her.  As 
she  glanced  at  him  from  time  to  time,  her  mind  was  busy 
with  thoughts  which  quenched  the  faint  hope  that  there  was 
nothing  painful  to  be  revealed  about  her  husband.  If  this  old 
man  had  been  in  the  wrong,  where  was  the  cause  for  dread 
and  secrecy  ? 

They  walked  on  in  silence  till  they  reached  the  entrance  into 
the  Via  de'  Bardi,  and  Romola  noticed  that  he  turned  and 
looked  at  her  with  a  sudden  movement  as  if  some  shock  had 
passed  through  him.  A  few  moments  after,  she  paused  at  the 
half-open  door  of  the  court  and  turned  towards  him. 

"  Ah  ! "  he  said,  not  waiting  for  her  to  speak,  "  you  are  his 
wife." 

"  Whose  wife  ?  "  said  Eomola. 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  Baldassarre  to  recall  any 
name  at  that  moment.  The  very  force  with  which  the  image 
of  Tito  pressed  upon  him  seemed  to  expel  any  verbal  sign. 
He  made  no  answer,  but  looked  at  her  with  strange  fixedness. 

She  opened  the  door  wide  and  showed  the  court  covered 
with  straw,  on  which  lay  four  or  five  sick  people,  while  some 
little  children  crawled  or  sat  on  it  at  their  ease  —  tiny  pale 
creatures,  biting  straws  and  gurgling. 

"  If  you  will  come  in,"  said  Romola,  tremulously,  "  I  will 
find  you  a  comfortable  place,  and  bring  you  some  more 
food." 

"  No,  I  will  not  come  in,"  said  Baldassarre.  But  he  stood 
still,  arrested  by  the  burden  of  impressions  under  which  his 
mind  was  too  confused  to  choose  a  course. 

"  Can  I  do  nothing  for  you  ?  "  said  Romola.  "  Let  me  give 
you  some  money  that  you  may  buy  food.  It  will  be  more 
plentiful  soon." 

She  had  put  her  hand  into  her  scarsella  as  she  spoke,  and 
held  out  her  palm  with  several  (jrossi  in  it.  She  purposely 
offered  him  more  than  she   would  have  given    to  any  other 


THE    VISIBLE  MADONNA.  351 

man  in  the  same  circumstances.     He   looked  at  the  coins  a 
little  while,  and  then  said,  — 

"  Yes,  I  will  take  them." 

She  poured  the  coins  into  his  palm,  and  he  grasped  them 
tightly. 

<'  Tell  me,"  said  Romola,  almost  beseechingly.  ''  What 
shall  you  "  — 

But  Baldassarre  had  turned  away  from  her,  and  was  walk 
ing  again  towards  the  bridge.  Passing  from  it,  straight  on 
up  the  Via  del  Fosso,  he  came  upon  the  shop  of  Niccolo 
Caparra,  and  turned  towards  it  without  a  pause,  as  if  it  had 
been  the  very  object  of  his  search.  Niccolo  was  at  that 
moment  in  procession  with  the  armorers  of  Florence,  and 
there  was  only  one  apprentice  in  the  shop.  Bvit  there  were 
all  sorts  of  weapons  in  abundance  hanging  there,  and  Baldas- 
sarre's  eyes  discerned  what  he  was  more  hungry  for  than  for 
bread.  Niccolo  himself  would  probably  have  refused  to  sell 
anything  that  might  serve  as  a  weaj^on  to  this  man  with  signs 
of  the  prison  on  him  ;  but  the  apprentice,  less  observant  and 
scrupulous,  took  three  grossl  for  a  sharp  hunting-knife  without 
any  hesitation.  It  was  a  conveniently  small  weapon,  which 
Baldassarre  could  easily  thrust  within  the  breast  of  his  tunic, 
and  he  walked  on,  feeling  stronger.  That  sharp  edge  might 
give  deadliness  to  the  thrust  of  an  aged  arm  :  at  least  it  was 
a  companion,  it  was  a  power  in  league  with  him,  even  if  it 
failed.  It  would  break  against  armor,  but  was  the  armor  sure 
to  be  always  there  ?  In  those  long  months  while  vengeance 
had  lain  in  prison,  baseness  had  perhaps  become  forgetful  and 
secure.  The  knife  had  been  bought  with  the  traitor's  own 
money.  That  was  just.  Before  he  took  the  money,  he  had 
felt  what  he  should  do  with  it  —  buy  a  weapon.  Yes,  and  if 
possible,  food  too ;  food  to  nourish  the  arm  that  would  grasp 
the  weapon,  food  to  nourish  the  body  which  was  the  temple  of 
vengeance.  When  he  had  had  enough  bread,  he  should  be 
able  to  think  and  act  —  to  think  first  how  he  could  hide  him- 
self, lest  Tito  should  have  him  dragged  away  again. 

With  that  idea  of  hiding  in  his  mind,  Baldassarre  turned 
up  the  narrowest  streets,  bought  himself  some  meat  and 
bread,  and  sat  down  under  the  first  loggia  to  eat.  The  bells 
that  swung  out  louder  and  louder  peals  of  joy,  laying  hold  of 
him  and  making  him  vibrate  along  with  all  the  air,  seemed  to 
him  simply  part  of  that  strong  world  which  was  against  him. 

Romola  had  watched  Baldassarre  until  he  had  disappeared 
round  the  turning  into  the  Piazza  de'  Mozzi,  half  feeling  that 


352  ROMOLA. 

his  departure  was  a  relief,  half  reproaching  herself  for  not 
seeking  with  more  decision  to  know  the  truth  about  him,  for 
not  assuring  herself  whether  there  were  any  guiltless  misery 
in  his  lot  which  she  was  not  helpless  to  relieve.  Yet  what 
could  she  have  done  if  the  truth  had  proved  to  be  the  burden 
of  some  painful  secret  about  her  husband,  in  addition  to  the 
anxieties  that  already  weighed  upon,  her  ?  Surely  a  wife  was 
permitted  to  desire  ignorance  of  a  husband's  wrong-doing, 
since  she  alone  must  not  protest  and  warn  men  against  him. 
But  that  thought  stirred  too  many  intricate  fibres  of  feeling 
to  be  pursued  now  in  her  weariness.  It  was  a  time  to  rejoice, 
since  help  had  come  to  Florence  ;  and  she  turned  into  the 
court  to  tell  the  good  news  to  her  patients  on  their  straw 
beds. 

She  closed  the  door  after  her,  lest  the  bells  should  drown 
her  voice,  and  then  throwing  the  black  drapery  from  her  head, 
that  the  women  might  see  her  better,  she  stood  in  the  midst 
and  told  them  that  corn  was  coming,  and  that  the  bells  were 
ringing  for  gladness  at  the  news.  They  all  sat  up  to  listen, 
while  the  children  trotted  or  crawled  towards  her,  and  pulled 
her  black  skirts,  as  if  they  were  impatient  at  being  all  that 
long  way  off  her  face.  She  yielded  to  them,  weary  as  she 
was,  and  sat  down  on  the  straw,  while  the  little  pale  things 
peeped  into  her  basket  and  pulled  her  hair  down,  and  the 
feeble  voices  around  her  said,  "  The  Holy  Virgin  be  praised  !  " 
"  It  was  the  procession  ! "  "  The  Mother  of  God  has  had  pity 
on  us ! " 

At  last  Romola  rose  from  the  heap  of  straw,  too  tired  to 
try  and  smile  any  longer,  saying  as  she  turned  up  the  stone 
steps,  — 

"  I  will  come  by  and  by,  to  bring  you  your  dinner." 

"  Bless  you,  madonna !  bless  you  !  "  said  the  faint  chorus, 
in  much  the  same  tone  as  that  in  which  they  had  a  few 
minutes  before  praised  and  thanked  the  unseen  Madonna. 

Romola  cared  a  great  deal  for  that  music.  She  had  no 
innate  taste  for  tending  the  sick  and  clothing  the  ragged,  like 
some  women  to  whom  the  details  of  such  work  are  welcome 
in  themselves,  simply  as  an  occupation.  Her  early  training 
had  kept  her  aloof  from  such  Avomanly  labors ;  and  if  she  had 
not  brought  to  them  the  inspiration  of  her  deepest  feelings, 
they  would  have  been  irksome  to  her.  But  they  had  come  to 
be  the  one  unshaken  resting-])lace  of  her  mind,  the  one  narrow 
pathway  on  which  the  light  fell  clear.  If  the  gulf  between 
herself   and   Tito   which   only  gathered   a   more  perceptible 


THE   VISIBLE  MADONNA.  353 

wideness  from  her  attempts  to  bridge  it  by  submission, 
brought  a  doubt  whether,  after  all,  the  bond  to  which  she 
had  labored  to  be  true  might  not  itself  be  false  —  if  she  came 
away  from  her  confessor,  Fra  Salvestro,  or  from  some  contact 
with  the  disciples  of  Savonarola  amongst  whom  she  wor- 
shipped, with  a  sickening  sense  that  these  people  were 
miserably  narrow,  and  with  an  almost  impetuous  re-action 
towards  her  old  contempt  for  their  superstition  —  she  found 
herself  recovering  a  firm  footing  in  her  works  of  womanly 
sympathy.  Whatever  else  made  her  doubt,  the  help  she  gave 
to  her  fellow-citizeus  made  her  sure  that  Fra  Girolamo  had 
been  right  to  call  her  back.  According  to  his  unforgotten 
words,  her  place  had  not  been  empty  :  it  had  been  filled  with 
her  love  and  her  labor.  Florence  had  had  need  of  her,  and  the 
more  her  own  sorrow  pressed  upon  her,  the  more  gladness  she 
felt  in  the  memories,  stretching  through  the  two  long  years, 
of  hours  and  moments  in  which  she  had  lightened  the  burden 
of  life  to  others.  All  that  ardor  of  her  nature  which  could 
no  longer  spend  itself  in  the  woman's  tenderness  for  father 
and  husband,  had  transformed  itself  into  an  enthusiasm  of 
sympathy  with  the  general  life.  She  had  ceased  to  think 
that  her  own  lot  could  be  happy  —  had  ceased  to  think  of 
happiness  at  all :  the  one  end  of  her  life  seemed  to  her  to  be 
the  diminishing  of  sorrow. 

Her  enthusiasm  was  continually  stirred  to  fresh  vigor  by 
the  influence  of  Savonarola.  In  spite  of  the  wearisome 
visions  and  allegories  from  which  she  recoiled  in  disgust 
when  they  came  as  stale  repetitions  from  other  lips  than  his, 
her  strong  affinity  for  his  passionate  sympathy  and  the 
splendor  of  his  aims  had  lost  none  of  its  power.  His  burn- 
ing indignation  against  the  abuses  and  oppression  that  made 
the  daily  story  of  the  Church  and  of  States  had  kindled  the 
ready  fire  in  her  too.  His  special  care  for  liberty  and  purity 
of  government  in  Florence,  with  his  constant  reference  of  this 
immediate  object  to  the  wider  end  of  a  universal  regeneration, 
had  created  in  her  a  new  consciousness  of  the  great  drama  of 
human  existence  in  which  her  life  was  a  part ;  and  through 
her  daily,  helpful  contact  with  the  less  fortunate  of  her 
fellow-citizens  this  new  consciousness  became  something 
stronger  than  a  vague  sentiment;  it  grew  into  a  more  and 
more  definite  motive  of  self-denying  practice.  She  thought 
little  about  dogmas,  and  shrank  from  reflecting  closely  on 
the  Frate's  prophecies  of  the  immediate  scourge  and  closely 
following  regeneration.     She  had  submitted  her  mind  to  his 


354  ROMOLA. 

and  had  entered  into  communion  with  the  Church,  because  in 
this  way  she  had  found  an  immediate  satisfaction  for  moral 
needs  which  all  the  previous  culture  and  experience  of  her 
life  had  left  hungering.  Fra  Girolamo's  voice  had  waked  in 
her  mind  a  reason  for  living,  apart  from  personal  enjoyment 
and  personal  affection ;  but  it  was  a  reason  that  seemed  to 
need  feeding  with  greater  forces  than  she  possessed  within 
herself,  and  her  submissive  use  of  all  offices  of  the  Church 
was  simply  a  watching  and  waiting  if  by  any  means  fresh 
strength  might  come.  The  pressing  problem  for  Romola  just 
then  was  not  to  settle  questions  of  controversy,  but  to  keep 
alive  that  flame  of  vinselfish  emotion  by  which  a  life  of 
sadness  might  still  be  a  life  of  active  love. 

Her  trust  in  Savonarola's  nature  as  greater  than  her  own 
made  a  large  part  of  the  strength  she  had  found.  And  the 
trust  was  not  to  be  lightly  shaken.  It  is  not  force  of  intellect 
which  causes  ready  repulsion  from  the  aberration  and  eccen- 
tricities of  greatness,  any  more  than  it  is  force  of  vision  that 
causes  the  eye  to  explore  the  warts  on  a  face  bright  with 
human  expression  ;  it  is  simply  the  negation  of  high  sensibil- 
ities. Romola  was  so  deeply  moved  by  the  grand  energies  of 
Savonarola's  nature,  that  she  found  herself  listening  patiently 
to  all  dogmas  and  prophecies,  when  they  came  in  the  vehicle 
of  his  ardent  faith  and  believing  utterance.-^ 

No  soul  is  desolate  as  long  as  there  is  a  human  being  for 
whom  it  can  feel  trust  and  reverence.  Romola's  trust  in 
Savonarola  was  something  like  a  rope  suspended  securely  by 
her  path,  making  her  step  elastic  while  she  grasped  it ;  if  it 
were  suddenly  removed,  no  firmness  of  the  ground  she  trod 
could  save  her  from  staggering,  or  perhaps  from  falling. 

1  He  himself  had  had  occasion  enough  to  note  the  efficacy  of  that  vehicle.  "  If," 
he  says  in  the  Compendium  Rerelationum,  "  you  speak  of  such  as  have  not  heard 
these  things  from  me,  I  admit  that  they  who  disbelieve  are  more  than  they  who 
believe,  because  it  is  one  thing  to  hear  him  who  inwardly  feels  these  things,  and 
anotlier  to  hear  him  who  feels  them  not  ;  .  .  .  and,  therefore,  it  is  well  said  by  St. 
Jerome, '  Habet  nescio  quid  latentis  energise  vivse  vocis  actus,  et  in  aures  discipuli 
de  auctoris  ore  trausf  usa  fortis  sonat.'  " 


AT  THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  355 


CHAPTER  XLV. 

AT   THE   barber's    SHOP. 

After  that  welcome  appearance  as  the  messenger  with  the 
olive  branch,  which  was  an  unpromised  favor  of  fortune,  Tito 
had  other  commissions  to  fulhl  of  a  more  premeditated  char- 
acter. He  paused  at  the  Palazzo  Vecchio,  and  awaited  there 
the  return  of  the  Ten,  who  managed  external  and  war  affairs, 
that  he  might  duly  deliver  to  them  the  results  of  his  private 
mission  to  Pisa,  intended  as  a  preliminary  to  an  avowed  em- 
bassy of  which  Bernardo  Rucellai  was  to  be  the  head,  with  the 
object  of  coming,  if  possible,  to  a  pacific  understanding  with 
the  Emperor  Maximilian  and  the  League. 

Tito's  talents  for  diplomatic  work  had  been  well  ascertained, 
and  as  he  gave  with  fulness  and  precision  the  results  of  his 
inquiries  and  interviews,  Bernai"do  del  Nero,  who  was  at  that 
time  one  of  the  Ten,  could  not  withhold  his  admiration.  He 
would  have  withheld  it  if  he  could ;  for  his  original  dislike  of 
Tito  had  returned,  and  become  stronger,  since  the  sale  of  the 
library.  Romola  had  never  uttered  a  word  to  her  godfather 
on  the  circumstances  of  the  sale,  and  Bernardo  had  understood 
her  silence  as  a  prohibition  to  him  to  enter  on  the  subject,  but 
he  felt  sure  that  the  breach  of  her  father's  wish  had  been  a 
blighting  grief  to  her,  and  the  old  man's  observant  eyes  dis- 
cerned other  indications  that  her  married  life  was  not  happy. 

"  Ah,"  he  said,  inwardly,  "  that  doubtless  is  the  reason  she 
has  taken  to  listening  to  Fra  Girolamo,  and  going  amongst  the 
Piagnoni,  which  I  never  expected  from  her.  These  women,  if 
they  are  not  happy,  and  have  no  children,  must  either  take  to 
folly  or  to  some  overstrained  religion  that  makes  them  think 
they've  got  all  heaven's  work  on  their  shoulders.  And  as  for 
my  poor  child  Romola,  it  is  as  I  always  said  —  the  cramming 
with  Latin  and  Greek  has  left  her  as  much  a  woman  as  if  she 
had  done  nothing  all  day  but  prick  her  fingers  with  the  needle. 
And  this  husband  of  hers,  who  gets  employed  everywhere, 
because  he's  a  tool  with  a  smooth  handle,  I  wish  Tornabuoni 
and  the  rest  may  not  find  their  fingers  cut.  Well,  well,  salco 
torto,  sacco  dritto  —  many  a  full  sack  comes  from  a  crooked 


356  ROMOLA. 

furrow  :  and  he  who  will  be  captain  of  none  but  honest  men 
will  have  small  hire  to  pay." 

With  this  long-established  conviction  that  there  could  be  no 
moral  sifting  of  political  agents,  the  old  Florentine  abstained 
from  all  interference  in  Tito's  disfavor.  Apart  from  what 
must  be  kept  sacred  and  private  for  Romola's  sake,  Bernardo 
had  nothing  direct  to  allege  against  the  useful  Greek,  except 
that  he  was  a  Greek,  and  that  he,  Bernardo,  did  not  like  him ; 
for  the  doubleness  of  feigning  attachment  to  the  popular  gov- 
ernment, while  at  heart  a  Medicean,  was  common  to  Tito  with 
more  than  half  the  Medicean  party.  He  only  feigned  with 
more  skill  than  the  rest :  that  was  all.  So  Bernardo  was  sim- 
ply cold  to  Tito,  who  returned  the  coldness  with  a  scrupulous 
distant  respect.  And  it  was  still  the  notion  in  Florence  that 
the  old  tie  between  Bernardo  and  Bardo  made  any  service 
done  to  Romola's  husband  an  acceptable  homage  to  her  god- 
father. 

After  delivering  himself  of  his  charge  at  the  Old  Palace, 
Tito  felt  that  the  avowed  official  work  of  the  day  was  done. 
He  was  tired  and  adust  with  long  riding ;  but  he  did  not  go 
home.  There  were  certain  things  in  his  scarsella  and  on  his 
mind,  from  which  he  wished  to  free  himself  as  soon  as  possi- 
ble, but  the  opportunities  must  be  found  so  skilfully  that  they 
must  not  seem  to  be  sought.  He  walked  from  the  Palazzo  in 
a  sauntering  fashion  towards  the  Piazza  del  Duomo.  The 
procession  was  at  an  end  now,  but  the  bells  were  still  ringing, 
and  the  people  were  moving  about  the  streets  restlessly,  long- 
ing for  some  more  definite  vent  to  their  joy.  If  the  Frate 
could  have  stood  up  in  the  great  Piazza  and  preached  to  them, 
they  might  have  been  satisfied,  but  now,  in  si)ite  of  the  new 
discipline  which  declared  Christ  to  be  the  special  King  of  the 
Florentines  and  required  all  pleasures  to  be  of  a  Christian  sort, 
there  was  a  secret  longing  in  many  of  the  youngsters  who 
shouted  "  Viva  Gesii !  "  for  a  little  vigorous  stone-throwing  in 
sign  of  thankfulness. 

Tito,  as  he  passed  along,  could  not  escape  being  recognized 
by  some  as  the  welcome  bearer  of  the  olive  branch,  and  could 
only  rid  himself  of  an  inconvenient  ovation,  chiefly  in  the  form 
of  eager  questions,  by  telling  those  who  pressed  on  him  that 
Meo  di  Sasso,  the  true  messenger  from  Leghorn,  must  now  be 
entering,  and  might  certainly  be  met  towards  the  Porta  San 
Prediano.     He  could  tell  much  more  than  Tito  knew. 

Freeing  himself  from  importunities  in  this  adroit  manner, 
he  made  his  way  to  the  Piazza  del  Duomo,  casting  his  long 


AT  THE  BARBER'S  SHOP,  357 

eyes  round  the  space  with  an  air  of  the  utmost  carelessness, 
but  really  seeking  to  detect  some  presence  which  might  fur- 
nish him  with  one  of  his  desired  opportunities.  The  fact  of 
the  procession  having  terminated  at  the  Duomo  made  it  prob- 
able that  there  would  be  more  than  the  usual  concentration  of 
loungers  and  talkers  in  the  Piazza  and  round  Xello's  shop.  It 
was  as  he  expected.  There  was  a  group  leaning  against  the 
rails  near  the  north  gates  of  the  Baptistery,  so  exactly  what 
he  sought,  that  he  looked  more  indifferent  than  ever,  and 
seemed  to  recognize  the  tallest  member  of  the  group  entirely 
by  chance  as  he  had  half  passed  him,  just  turning  his  head  to 
give  him  a  slight  greeting,  while  he  tossed  the  end  of  his 
becchetto  over  his  left  shovilder. 

Yet  the  tall,  broad-shouldered  personage  greeted  in  that 
slight  way  looked  like  one  who  had  considerable  claims.  He 
wore  a  richly  embroidered  tunic,  with  a  great  show  of  linen, 
after  the  newest  French  mode,  and  at  his  belt  there  hung  a 
sword  and  poniard  of  fine  workmanship.  His  hat,  with  a  red 
plume  in  it,  seemed  a  scornful  protest  against  the  gravity  of 
Florentine  costume,  which  had  been  exaggerated  to  the  utmost 
under  the  influence  of  the  Piagnoni.  Certain  undefinable 
indications  of  youth  made  the  breadth  of  his  face  and  the 
large  diameter  of  his  waist  appear  the  more  emphatically  a 
stamp  of  coarseness,  and  his  eyes  had  that  rude  desecrating 
stare  at  all  men  and  things  which  to  a  refined  mind  is  as  in- 
tolerable as  a  bad  odor  or  a  flaring  light. 

He  and  his  companions,  also  young  men  dressed  expensively 
and  wearing  arms,  were  exchanging  jokes  with  that  sort  of 
ostentatious  laughter  which  implies  a  desire  to  prove  that  the 
laughter  is  not  mortified  though  some  people  might  suspect  it. 
There  were  good  reasons  for  such  a  suspicion  ;  for  this  broad- 
shouldered  man  with  the  red  feather  was  Dolfo  Spini,  leader 
of  the  Compagnacci,  or  Evil  Companions  —  that  is  to  say,  of 
all  the  dissolute  young  men  belonging  to  the  old  aristocratic 
party,  enemies  of  the  Mediceans,  enemies  of  the  popular  gov- 
ernment, but  still  more  bitter  enemies  of  Savonarola.  Dolfo 
Spini,  heir  of  the  great  house  with  the  loggia,  over  the  bridge 
of  the  Santa  Trinita,  had  organized  these  young  men  into 
an  armed  band,  as  sworn  champions  of  extravagant  suppers 
and  all  the  pleasant  sins  of  the  flesh,  against  reforming 
pietists  who  threatened  to  make  the  world  chaste  and  tem- 
perate to  so  intolerable  a  degree  that  there  would  soon  be 
no  reason  for  living,  except  the  extreme  unpleasantness  of 
the  alternative.     Up  to  this  very  morning  he  had  been  loudly 


368  ROMOLA. 

declaring  that  Florence  was  given  up  to  famine  and  ruin 
entirely  through  its  blind  adherence  to  the  advice  of  the 
Frate,  and  that  there  could  be  no  salvation  for  Florence 
but  in  joining  the  League  and  driving  the  Frate  out  of  the 
city  —  sending  him  to  Rome,  in  fact  whither  he  ought  to 
have  gone  long  ago  in  obedience  to  the  summons  of  the 
Pope.  It  was  suspected,  therefore,  that  Messer  Dolfo  Spini's 
heart  was  not  aglow  with  pure  joy  at  the  unexpected  succors 
which  had  come  in  apparent  fulfilment  of  the  Frate's  predic- 
tion, and  the  laughter,  which  was  ringing  out  afresh  as  Tito 
joined  the  group  at  Nello's  door,  did  not  serve  to  dissipate  the 
suspicion.  For  leaning  against  the  door-post  in  the  centre  of 
the  group  was  a  close-shaven,  keen-eyed  personage,  named 
Niccolo  Macchiavelli,  who,  young  as  he  was,  had  penetrated  all 
the  small  secrets  of  egoism. 

"  Messer  Dolfo's  head,"  he  was  saying,  "  is  more  of  a  pump- 
kin than  I  thought.  I  measure  men's  dulness  by  the  devices 
they  trust  in  for  deceiving  others.  Your  dullest  animal  of  all 
is  he  who  grins  aud  says  he  doesn't  mind  just  after  he  has 
had  his  shins  kicked.  If  I  were  a  trifle  duller,  now,"  he  went 
on,  smiling  as  the  circle  opened  to  admit  Tito,  "  I  should  pre- 
tend to  be  fond  of  this  Melema,  who  has  got  a  secretaryship 
that  would  exactly  suit  me  —  as  if  Latin  ill  paid  could  love 
better  Latin  that's  better  paid  !  Melema,  you  are  a  pestifer- 
ously clever  fellow,  very  much  in  my  way,  and  I'm  sorry  to 
hear  you've  had  another  piece  of  good  luck  to-day." 

"Questionable  luck,  Niccolo,"  said  Tito,  touching  him  on 
the  shoulder  in  a  friendly  wa}' ;  "  I  have  got  nothing  by  it  yet 
but  being  laid  hold  of  and  breathed  upon  by  wool-beaters, 
when  I  am  as  soiled  and  battered  with  riding  as  a  tahellario 
(letter-carrier)  from  Bologna." 

"  Ah !  you  want  a  touch  of  my  art,  Messer  Oratore,"  said 
Nello,  who  had  come  forward  at  the  sound  of  Tito's  voice ; 
"your  chin,  I  perceive,  has  yesterday's  crop  upon  it.  Come, 
come — consign  yourself  to  the  priest  of  all  the  Muses. 
Sandro,  quick  with  the  lather  !  " 

"In  truth,  Nello,  that  is  just  what  I  most  desire  at  this  mo- 
ment," said  Tito,  seating  himself;  "and  that  was  why  I 
turned  my  steps  towards  thy  shop,  instead  of  going  home  ai; 
once,  when  I  had  done  my  business  at  the  Palazzo." 

"  Yes,  indeed,  it  is  not  fitting  that  you  should  present  your- 
self to  Madonna  Romola  with  a  rusty  chin  and  a  tangled  siaz- 
zera.  Nothing  that  is  not  dainty  ought  to  approach  the 
Florentine  lily ;  though  1  see  her  constantly  going  about  like 


AT  THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  359 

a  sunbeam  amongst  the  rags  that  line  our  corners  —  if  indeed 
she  is  not  more  like  a  moonbeam  now,  for  I  thought  yester- 
day, when  I  met  her,  that  she  looked  as  pale  and  worn  as  that 
fainting  Madonna  of  Fra  Giovanni's.  You  must  see  to  it,  my 
bel  erudito  :  she  keeps  too  many  fasts  and  vigils  in  your  ab- 
sence." 

Tito  gave  a  melancholy  shrug.  "  It  is  too  true,  Nello.  She 
has  been  depriving  herself  of  half  her  proper  food  every  day 
during  this  famine.  But  what  can  I  do  ?  Her  mind  has  been 
set  all  aflame.  A  husband's  influence  is  powerless  against  the 
Frate's." 

"  As  every  other  influence  is  likely  to  be,  that  of  the  Holy 
Father  included,"  said  Domenico  Cennini,  one  of  the  group  at 
the  door,  who  had  turned  in  with  Tito.  "  I  don't  know 
whether  you  have  gathered  anything  at  Pisa  about  the  way 
the  wind  sits  at  Rome,  Melema  ?  " 

"  Secrets  of  the  council  chamber,  Messer  Domenico  !  "  said 
Tito,  smiling  and  opening  his  palms  in  a  deprecatory  manner. 
"  An  envoy  must  be  as  dumb  as  a  father  confessor." 

"  Certainly,  certainly,"  said  Cennini.  "  I  ask  for  no  breach 
of  that  rule.  Well,  my  belief  is,  that  if  his  Holiness  were  to 
drive  Fra  Girolamo  to  extremity,  the  Frate  would  move 
heaven  and  earth  to  get  a  General  Council  of  the  Church  — 
ay,  and  would  get  it  too ;  and  I,  for  one,  should  not  be  sorry, 
though  I'm  no  Piagnone." 

"  With  leave  of  your  greater  experience,  Messer  Domenico," 
said  Macchiavelli,  "  I  must  differ  from  you  —  not  in  your  wish 
to  see  a  General  Council  which  might  reform  the  Church,  but 
in  your  belief  that  the  Frate  will  checkmate  his  Holiness. 
The  Frate's  game  is  an  impossible  one.  If  he  had  contented 
himself  with  preaching  against  the  vices  of  Rome,  and  with 
prophesying  that  in  some  way,  not  mentioned,  Italy  would  be 
scourged,  depend  upon  it  Pope  Alexander  would  have  allowed 
him  to  spend  his  breath  in  that  way  as  long  as  he  could  find 
hearers.  Such  spiritual  blasts  as  those  knock  no  walls  down. 
But  the  Frate  wants  to  be  something  more  than  a  spiritual 
trumpet :  he  wants  to  be  a  lever,  and  what  is  more,  he  is  a 
lever.  He  wants  to  spread  the  doctrine  of  Christ  by  main- 
taining a  popular  government  in  Florence,  and  the  Pope,  as  I 
know,  on  the  best  authority,  has  private  views  to  the  con- 
trary." 

''  Then  Florence  will  stand  by  the  Frate,"  Cennini  broke  in, 
with  some  fervor.  "  I  myself  should  prefer  that  he  would  let 
his  prophesying  alone,  but  if  our  freedom  to  choose  our  own 


360  ROMOLA. 

government  is  to  be  attacked  —  I  am  an  obedient  son  of  the 
Church,  but  I  would  vote  for  resisting  Pope  Alexander  the 
Sixth,  as  our  forefathers  resisted  Pope  Gregory  the  Eleventh." 

"  But  pardon  me,  Messer  Domenico,"  said  Macchiavelli, 
sticking  his  thumbs  into  his  belt,  and  speaking  with  that  cool 
enjoyment  of  exposition  which  surmounts  every  other  force 
in  discussion.  "  Have  you  correctly  seized  the  Prate's  posi- 
tion ?  How  is  it  that  he  has  become  a  lever,  and  made  him- 
self worth  attacking  by  an  acute  man  like  his  Holiness  ? 
Because  he  has  got  the  ear  of  the  people :  because  he  gives 
them  threats  and  promises,  which  they  believe  come  straight 
from  God,  not  only  about  hell,  purgatory,  and  paradise,  but 
about  Pisa  and  our  Great  Council.  But  let  events  go  against 
him,  so  as  to  shake  the  people's  faith,  and  the  cause  of  his 
power  will  be  the  cause  of  his  fall.  He  is  accumulating 
three  sorts  of  hatred  on  his  head  —  the  hatred  of  average 
mankind  against  every  one  who  wants  to  lay  on  them  a  strict 
yoke  of  virtue  ;  the  hatred  of  the  stronger  powers  in  Italy 
who  want  to  farm  Florence  for  their  own  purposes ;  and  the 
hatred  of  the  people,  to  whom  he  has  ventured  to  promise 
good  in  this  world,  instead  of  confining  his  promises  to  the 
next.  If  a  prophet  is  to  keep  his  power,  he  must  be  a  prophet 
like  Mahomet,  with  an  army  at  his  back,  that  when  the  peo- 
ple's faith  is  fainting  it  may  be  frightened  into  life  again." 

"  Rather  sum  up  the  three  sorts  of  hatred  in  one,"  said 
Francesco  Cei,  impetuously,  "  and  say  he  has  won  the  hatred 
of  all  men  who  have  sense  and  honesty,  by  inventing  hypo- 
critical lies.  His  proper  place  is  among  the  false  prophets  in 
the  Inferno,  who  walk  with  their  heads  turned  hindfore- 
most." 

"  You  are  too  angry,  my  Francesco,"  said  Macchiavelli, 
smiling ;  "  you  poets  are  apt  to  cut  the  clouds  in  your  wrath. 
I  am  no  votary  of  the  Prate's,  and  would  not  lay  down  my 
little  finger  for  his  veracity.  But  veracity  is  a  plant  of  para- 
dise, and  the  seeds  have  never  flourished  beyond  the  walls. 
You,  yourself,  my  Francesco,  tell  poetical  lies  only ;  partly 
compelled  by  the  poet's  fervor,  partly  to  please  your  audience ; 
but  you  object  to  lies  in  prose.  Well,  the  Prate  differs  from 
you  as  to  the  boundary  of  poetry,  that's  all.  When  he  gets 
into  the  pulpit  of  the  Duomo,  he  has  the  fervor  within  him, 
and  without  him  he  has  the  audience  to  please.     Ecco  !  " 

"  You  are  somewhat  lax  there,  Niccolo,"  said  Cennini, 
gravely.  "  I  myself  believe  in  the  Prate's  integrity,  thougli 
I  don't  believe  in  his  prophecies,  and  as  long  as  his  integrity 


AT  THE  BARBER'S  SHOP.  361 

is  not  disproved,  we  have  a  popular  party  strong  enough  to 
protect  him  and  resist  foreign  interference." 

"  A  party  that  seems  strong  enough,"  said  Macchiavelli, 
with  a  shrug,  and  an  almost  imperceptible  glance  towards  Tito, 
who  was  abandoning  himself  with  much  enjoyment  to  Nello's 
combing  and  scenting.  "  But  how  many  Mediceans  are  there 
among  you  ?  How  many  who  will  not  be  turned  round  by  a 
private  grudge  ?  " 

"  As  to  the  Mediceans,"  said  Cennini,  "  I  believe  there  is 
^ery  little  genuine  feeling  left  on  behalf  of  the  Medici.  Who 
j^'ould  risk  much  for  Piero  de'  Medici  ?  A  few  old  stanch 
friends,  perhaps,  like  Bernardo  del  Nero  ;  but  even  some  of 
those  most  connected  with  the  family  are  hearty  friends  of 
the  popular  government,  and  would  exert  themselves  for  the 
Fraie.  I  was  talking  to  Giannozzo  Pucci  only  a  little  while 
ago,  and  I  am  convinced  there's  nothing  he  would  set  his  face 
against  more  than  against  any  attempt  to  alter  the  new  order 
of  things." 

*'  You  are  right  there,  Messer  Domenico,"  said  Tito,  with  a 
laughing  meaning  in  his  eyes,  as  he  rose  from  the  shaving- 
chair  •  ''  and  I  fancy  the  tender  passion  came  in  aid  of  hard 
theory  there.  I  am  persuaded  there  was  some  jealousy  at  the 
bottom  of  Giannozzo's  alienation  from  Piero  de'  Medici ;  else 
so  amiable  a  creature  as  he  would  never  feel  the  bitterness  he 
sometimes  allows  to  escape  him  in  that  quarter.  He  was  in 
the  procession  with  you,  I  suppose  ?  " 

"No,"  said  Cennini;  "he  is  at  his  villa — went  there  three 
days  ago." 

Tito  was  settling  his  cap  and  glancing  down  at  his  splashed 
hose  as  if  he  hardly  heeded  the  answer.  In  reality  he  had 
obtained  a  much-desired  piece  of  information.  He  had  at 
that  moment  in  his  scarsella  a  crushed  gold  ring  which  he  had 
engaged  to  deliver  to  Giannozzo  Pucci.  He  had  received  it 
from  an  envoy  of  Piero  de'  Medici,  whom  he  had  ridden  out 
of  his  way  to  meet  at  Certaldo  on  the  Siena  road.  Since 
Pucci  was  not  in  the  town,  he  would  send  the  ring  by  Fra 
Michele,  a  Carthusian  lay  Brother  in  the  service  of  the  Medi- 
ceans, and  the  receipt  of  that  sign  would  bring  Pucci  back  to 
hear  the  verbal  part  of  Tito's  mission. 

"  Behold  him  ! "  said  iSTello,  flourishing  his  comb  and  point- 
ing it  at  Tito,  "  the  handsomest  scholar  in  the  world  or  in  the 
wolds,^  now  he  has  passed  through  my  hands  !  A  trifle  thin- 
ner in  the  face,  though,  than  whjn  he  came  in  his  first  bloom 

1  "  Del  mondo  o  d«  maremiua." 


862  ROMOLA. 

to  Florence  —  eh  ?  and,  I  vow,  there  are  some  lines  just 
faintly  hinting  themselves  about  your  mouth,  Messer  Oratore ! 
Ah,  mind  is  an  enemy  to  beauty !  I  myself  was  thought 
beautiful  by  the  women  at  one  time  —  when  I  was  in  my 
swaddling-bands.  But  now  —  oime !  I  carry  my  unwritten 
poems  in  cipher  on  my  face  ! " 

Tito,  laughing  with  the  rest  as  Nello  looked  at  himself 
tragically  in  the  hand-mirror,  made  a  sign  of  farewell  to  the 
company  generally,  and  took  his  departure. 

"  I'm  of  our  old  Piero  di  Cosimo's  mind,"  said  Francesco 
Cei.  "  I  don't  half  like  Melema.  That  trick  of  smiling  gets 
stronger  than  ever  —  no  wonder  he  has  lines  about  the  mouth." 

"  He's  too  successful,"  said  Macehiavelli,  playfully.  "  I'm 
sure  there's  something  wrong  about  him,  else  he  wouldn't  have 
that  secretaryship." 

"  He's  an  able  man,"  said  Cennini,  in  a  tone  of  judicial  fair- 
ness. "  I  and  my  brother  have  always  found  him  useful  with 
our  Greek  sheets,  and  he  gives  great  satisfaction  to  the  Ten. 
I  like  to  see  a  young  man  work  his  way  upward  by  merit. 
And  the  secretary  Scala,  who  befriended  him  from  the  first, 
thinks  highly  of  him  still,  I  know." 

''  Doubtless,"  said  a  notary  in  the  background.  "  He  writes 
Scala's  official  letters  for  him,  or  corrects  them,  and  gets  well 
paid  for  it  too." 

"  I  wish  Messer  Bartolommeo  would  pay  me  to  doctor  his 
gouty  Latin,"  said  Macehiavelli,  with  a  shrug.  "  Did  he  tell 
you  about  the  pay,  Ser  Ceccone,  or  was  it  Melema  himself  ?  " 
he  added,  looking  at  the  notary  with  a  face  ironically  inno- 
cent. 

"  Melema  ?  no,  indeed,"  answered  Ser  Ceccone.  '''  He  is  as 
close  as  a  nut.  He  never  brags.  That's  why  he's  employed 
everywhere.  They  say  he's  getting  rich  with  doing  all  sorts 
of  underhand  work." 

"  It  is  a  little  too  bad,"  said  Macehiavelli,  "  and  so  many 
able  notaries  out  of  employment !  " 

"  Well,  I  must  say  I  thought  that  was  a  nasty  story  a  year 
or  two  ago  about  the  man  who  said  he  had  stolen  jewels,"  said 
Cei.  "  It  got  hushed  up  somehow  ;  but  I  remember  Piero  di 
Cosimo  said,  at  the  time,  he  believed  there  was  something  in 
it,  for  he  saw  Melema's  face  when  the  man  laid  hold  of  him, 
and  he  never  saw  a  visage  so  '  painted  with  fear,'  as  our  sour 
old  Dante  says." 

"  Come,  spit  no  more  of  that  venom,  Francesco,"  said  Nelio, 
getting  indignant,  "  else  I  shall  consider  it  a  public  duty  to 


BY  A   STREET  LAMP.  363 

cut  your  hair  awry  the  next  time  I  get  you  under  my  scissors. 
That  story  of  the  stolen  jewels  was  a  lie.  Bernardo  Rucellai 
and  the  Magnificent  Eight  knew  all  about  it.  The  man  was 
a  dangerous  madman,  and  he  was  very  properly  kept  out  of 
mischief  in  prison.  As  for  our  Piero  di  Cosimo,  his  wits  are 
running  after  the  wind  of  Mongibello :  he  has  such  an  extrava- 
gant fancy  that  he  would  take  a  lizard  for  a  crocodile.  No : 
that  story  has  been  dead  and  buried  too  long  —  our  noses 
object  to  it." 

"  It  is  true,"  said  Macchiavelli.  "  You  forget  the  danger  of 
the  precedent,  Francesco.  The  next  mad  beggar  man  may  ac- 
cuse you  of  stealing  his  verses,  or  me,  God  help  me  !  of  steal- 
ing his  coppers.  Ah  !  "  he  Avent  on,  turning  towards  the  door, 
^'  Dolfo  Spini  has  carried  his  red  feather  out  of  the  Piazza. 
That  captain  of  swaggerers  would  like  the  Republic  to  lose 
Pisa  just  for  the  chance  of  seeing  the  people  tear  the  frock 
off  the  Frate's  back.  With  your  pardon,  Francesco  —  I  know 
he  is  a  friend  of  yours  —  there  are  few  things  I  should  like 
better  than  to  see  him  play  the  part  of  Capo  d'Oca,  who  went 
out  to  the  tournament  blowing  his  trumpets  and  returned  with 
them  in  a  bag." 


CHAPTER   XLVI. 

BY    A    STREET    LAMP. 

That  evening,  when  it  was  dark  and  threatening  rain,  Ro- 
mola,  returning  with  Maso  and  the  lantern  by  her  side,  from 
the  hospital  of  San  Matteo,  which  she  had  visited  after  ves- 
pers, encountered  her  husband  just  issuing  from  the  monastery 
of  San  Marco.  Tito,  who  had  gone  out  again  shortly  after  his 
arrival  in  the  Via  de'  Bardi,  and  had  seen  little  of  Romola 
during  the  day,  immediately  proposed  to  accompany  her  home, 
dismissing  Maso,  whose  short  steps  annoyed  him.  It  was  only 
usual  for  him  to  pay  her  such  an  official  attention  when  it  was 
obviously  demanded  from  him.  Tito  and  Romola  never  jarred, 
never  remonstrated  with  each  other.  They  were  too  hope- 
lessly alienated  in  their  inner  life  ever  to  have  that  contest 
which  is  an  effort  towards  agreement.  They  talked  of  all 
affairs,  public  and  private,  with  careful  adherence  to  an 
adopted  course.  If  Tito  wanted  a  supper  prepared  in  the  old 
library,  now  pleasantly  furnished  as  a  banqueting-room,  Ro- 


364  ROMOLA. 

mola  assented,  and  saw  that  everything  needful  was  done : 
and  Tito,  on  his  side,  left  her  entirely  uncontrolled  in  her  daily 
habits,  accepting  the  help  she  offered  him  in  transcribing  or 
making  digests,  and  in  return  meeting  her  conjectured  want  of 
supplies  for  her  charities.  Yet  he  constantly,  as  on  this  very 
morning,  avoided  exchanging  glances  with  her ;  affected  to 
believe  that  she  was  out  of  the  house,  in  order  to  avoid  seek- 
ing her  in  her  own  room  ;  and  playfully  attributed  to  her  a 
perpetual  preference  of  solitude  to  his  society. 

In  the  tirst  ardor  of  her  self-conquest,  after  she  had  re- 
nounced her  resolution  of  flight,  Romola  had  made  many  timid 
efforts  towards  the  return  of  a  frank  relation  between  them. 
But  to  her  such  a  relation  could  only  come  by  open  speech 
about  their  differences,  and  the  attempt  to  arrive  at  a  moral 
understanding;  while  Tito  could  only  be  saved  from  aliena- 
tion from  her  by  such  a  recovery  of  her  effusive  tenderness  as 
would  have  presupposed  oblivion  of  their  differences.  He 
cared  for  no  explanation  between  them  ;  he  felt  any  thorough 
explanation  impossible :  he  would  have  cared  to  have  Romola 
fond  again,  and  to  her,  fondness  was  impossible.  She  could 
be  submissive  and  gentle,  she  could  repress  au}^  sign  of  repul- 
sion ;  but  tenderness  was  not  to  be  feigned.  She  was  help- 
lessly conscious  of  the  result :  her  husband  was  alienated  from 
her. 

It  was  an  additional  reason  why  she  should  be  carefully 
kept  outside  of  secrets  which  he  would  in  no  case  have  chosen 
to  communicate  to  her.  With  regard  to  his  political  action 
he  sought  to  convince  her  that  he  considered  the  cause  of  the 
Medici  hopeless  ;  and  that  on  that  practical  ground,  as  well  as 
in  theory,  he  heartily  served  the  popular  government,  in  which 
she  had  now  a  warm  interest.  But  impressions  subtle  as 
odors  made  her  uneasy  about  his  relations  with  San  Marco. 
She  was  painfully  divided  between  the  dread  of  seeing  any 
evidence  to  arouse  her  suspicions,  and  the  impulse  to  watch 
lest  any  harm  should  come  that  she  might  have  arrested. 

As  they  walked  together  this  evening,  Tito  said,  —  "  The 
business  of  the  day  is  not  yet  quite  ended  for  me.  I  shall 
conduct  you  to  our  door,  my  Eomola,  and  then  I  must  fuliil 
another  commission,  which  will  take  me  an  hour,  perhaps, 
before  I  can  return  and  rest,  as  I  very  much  need  to  do." 

And  then  he  talked  amusingly  of  what  he  had  seen  at  Pisa, 
until  they  were  close  upon  a  loggia,  near  which  there  hung  a 
lamp  before  a  picture  of  the  Virgin.  The  street  was  a  quiet 
one,  and  hitherto  they  had  passed  few  people ;  but  now  there 


BY  A   STREET  LAMP.  365 

was  a  sound  of  many  approaching  footsteps  and  confused 
voices. 

"  We  shall  not  get  home  without  a  wetting,  unless  we  take 
shelter  under  this  convenient  loggia,"  Tito  said,  hastily,  hur- 
rying Romola,  with  a  slightly  startled  movement,  up  the  step 
of  the  loggia. 

"  Surely  it  is  useless  to  wait  for  this  small  drizzling  rain," 
said  Romola,  in  surprise. 

"No:  I  felt  it  becoming  heavier.  Let  us  wait  a  little." 
With  that  wakefulness  to  the  faintest  indication  which  be- 
longs to  a  mind  habitually  in  a  state  of  caution,  Tito  had  de- 
tected by  the  glimmer  of  the  lamp  that  the  leader  of  the  ad- 
vancing group  wore  a  red  feather  and  a  glittering  sword-hilt 
—  in  fact,  was  almost  the  last  person  in  the  world  he  would 
have  chosen  to  meet  at  this  hour  with  Romola  by  his  side. 
He  had  already  during  the  day  had  one  momentous  interview 
with  Dolfo  Spini,  and  the  business  he  had  spoken  of  to 
Romola  as  yet  to  be  done  was  a  second  interview  with  that 
personage,  a  sequence  of  the  visit  he  had  paid  at  San  Marco. 
Tito,  by  a  long-preconcerted  plan,  had  been  the  bearer  of 
letters  to  Savonarola  —  carefully  forged  letters;  one  of  them, 
by  a  stratagem,  bearing  the  very  signature  and  seal  of  the 
Cardinal  of  Naples,  who  of  all  the  Sacred  College  had  most 
exerted  his  influence  at  Rome  in  favor  of  the  Frate.  The  pur- 
port of  the  letters  was  to  state  that  the  Cardinal  was  on  his 
progress  from  Pisa,  and,  unwilling  for  strong  reasons  to  enter 
Florence,  yet  desirous  of  taking  counsel  with  Savonarola  at 
this  difficult  juncture,  intended  to  pause  this  very  day  at  San 
Casciano,  about  ten  miles  from  the  city,  whence  he  would  ride 
out  the  next  morning  in  the  plain  garb  of  a  priest,  and  meet 
Savonarola,  as  if  casually,  five  miles  on  the  Florence  road, 
two  hours  after  sunrise.  The  plot,  of  which  these  forged 
letters  were  the  initial  step,  was  that  Dolfo  Spini  with  a  band 
of  his  Compagnacci  was  to  be  posted  in  ambush  on  the  road, 
at  a  lonely  spot  about  five  miles  from  the  gates ;  that  he  was 
to  seize  Savonarola  with  the  Dominican  brother  who  would 
accompany  him  according  to  rule,  and  deliver  him  over  to  a 
small  detachment  of  Milanese  horse  in  readiness  near  San 
Casciano,  by  whom  he  was  to  be  carried  into  the  Roman 
territory. 

There  was  a  strong  chance  that  the  penetrating  Frate  would 
suspect  a  trap,  and  decline  to  incur  the  risk,  which  he  had  for 
some  time  avoided,  of  going  beyond  the  city  walls.  Even 
when  he  preached,  his  friends  held  it  necessary  that  he  should 


366  ROMOLA. 

be  attended  by  an  armed  guard ;  and  here  he  was  called  on  to 
commit  himself  to  a  solitary  road,  with  no  other  attendant 
than  a  fellow-monk.  On  this  ground  the  minimum  of  time 
had  been  given  him  for  decision,  and  the  chance  in  favor  of 
his  acting  on  the  letters  was,  that  the  eagerness  with  which 
his  mind  was  set  on  the  combining  of  interests  within  and 
without  the  Church  towards  the  procuring  of  a  General  Coun- 
cil, and  also  the  expectation  of  immediate  service  from  the 
Cardinal  in  the  actual  juncture  of  his  contest  with  the  Pope, 
would  triumph  over  his  shrewdness  and  caution  in  the  brief 
space  allowed  for  deliberation. 

Tito  had  had  an  audience  of  Savonarola,  having  declined  to 
put  the  letters  into  any  hands  but  his,  and  with  consummate 
art  had  admitted  that  incidentally,  and  by  inference,  he  was 
able  so  far  to  conjecture  their  purport  as  to  believe  they  re- 
ferred to  a  rendezvous  outside  the  gates,  in  which  case  he  urged 
that  the  Frate  should  seek  an  armed  guard  from  the  Signoria, 
and  offered  his  services  in  carrying  the  request  with  the  ut- 
most privacy.  Savonarola  had  replied  briefly  that  this  was 
impossible  :  an  armed  guard  was  incompatible  with  privacy. 
He  spoke  with  a  flashing  eye,  and  Tito  felt  convinced  that  he 
meant  to  incur  the  risk. 

Tito  himself  did  not  much  care  for  the  result.  He  man- 
aged his  affairs  so  cleverly,  that  all  results,  he  considered,  must 
turn  to  his  advantage.  Whichever  party  came  uppermost,  he 
was  secure  of  favor  and  money.  That  is  an  indecorously 
naked  statement ;  the  fact,  clothed  as  Tito  habitually  clothed 
it,  was  that  his  acute  mind,  discerning  the  equal  hollowness  of 
all  parties,  took  the  only  rational  course  in  making  them  sub- 
servient to  his  own  interest. 

If  Savonarola  fell  into  the  snare,  there  were  diamonds  in 
question  and  papal  patronage ;  if  not,  Tito's  adroit  agency  had 
strengthened  his  position  with  Savonarola  and  with  Spini, 
while  any  confidences  he  obtained  from  them  made  him  the 
more  valuable  as  an  agent  of  the  Mediceans. 

But  Spini  was  an  inconvenient  colleague.  He  had  cunning 
enough  to  delight  in  plots,  but  not  the  ability  or  self-command 
necessary  to  so  complex  an  effect  as  secrecy.  He  frequently 
got  excited  with  drinking,  for  even  sober  Florence  had  its 
"  Beoni,"  or  topers,  both  lay  and  clerical,  who  became  loud  at 
taverns  and  private  banquets  ;  and  in  spite  of  the  agreement 
between  him  and  Tito,  that  their  public  recognition  of  each 
other  should  invariably  be  of  the  coolest  sort,  tliere  was 
always  the  possibility  that  on  an  evening  encounter  he  would 


BY  A   STREET  LAMP.  367 

be  suddenly  blurting  and  affectionate.  The  delicate  sign  of 
casting  the  becchetto  over  the  left  shoulder  was  understood  in 
the  morning,  but  the  strongest  hint  short  of  a  threat  might 
not  suffice  to  keep  off  a  fraternal  grasp  of  the  shoulder  in  the 
evening. 

Tito's  chief  hope  now  was  that  Dolfo  Spini  had  not  caught 
sight  of  him,  and  the  hope  would  have  been  well  founded  if 
Spini  had  had  no  clearer  view  of  him  than  he  had  caught  of 
Spini.  But,  himself  in  shadow,  he  had  seen  Tito  illuminated 
for  an  instant  by  the  direct  rays  of  the  lamp,  and  Tito  in  his 
way  was  as  strongly  marked  a  personage  as  the  captain  of  the 
Compagnacci.  Romola's  black-shrouded  figure  had  escaped 
notice,  and  she  now  stood  behind  her  husband's  shoulder  in 
the  corner  of  the  loggia.     Tito  was  not  left  to  hope  long. 

"  Ha !  my  carrier-pigeon  ! "  grated  Spini's  harsh  voice,  in 
what  he  meant  to  be  an  undertone,  while  his  hand  grasped 
Tito's  shoulder ;  "  what  did  you  run  into  hiding  for  ?  You 
didn't  know  it  was  comrades  who  were  coming.  It's  well  I 
caught  sight  of  you;  it  saves  time.  What  of  the  chase  to- 
morrow morning  ?  Will  the  bald-headed  game  rise  ?  Are 
the  falcons  to  be  got  ready  ?  " 

If  it  had  been  in  Tito's  nature  to  feel  an  access  of  rage,  he 
would  have  felt  it  against  this  bull-faced  accomplice,  unfit 
either  for  a  leader  or  a  tool.  His  lips  turned  white,  but  his 
excitement  came  from  the  pressing  difficulty  of  choosing  a 
safe  device.  If  he  attempted  to  hush  Spini,  that  would  only 
deepen  Romola's  suspicion,  and  he  knew  her  well  enough  to 
know  that  if  some  strong  alarm  were  roused  in  her,  she  was 
neither  to  be  silenced  nor  hoodwinked :  on  the  other  hand,  if 
he  repelled  Spini  angrily  the  wine-breathing  Compagnaccio 
might  become  savage,  being  more  ready  at  resentment  than  at 
the  divination  of  motives.  He  adopted  a  third  course,  which 
proved  that  Romola  retained  one  sort  of  power  over  him  — 
the  power  of  dread. 

He  pressed  her  hand,  as  if  intending  a  hint  to  her,  and  said 
in  a  good-humored  tone  of  comradeship,  — 

"  Yes,  my  Dolfo,  you  may  prepare  in  all  security.  But  take 
no  trumpets  with  you." 

'•'  Don't  be  afraid,"  said  Spini,  a  little  piqued.  "  No  need  to 
play  Ser  Saccente  with  me.  I  know  where  the  devil  keeps  his 
tail  as  well  as  you  do.  What !  he  swallowed  the  bait  whole  ? 
The  prophetic  nose  didn't  scent  the  hook  at  all  ?  "  he  went 
on,  lowering  his  tone  a  little,  with  a  blundering  sense  of 
secrecy. 


368  ROMOLA. 

"The  brute  will  not  be  satisfied  till  he  has  emptied  the 
bag,"  thought  Tito  :  but  aloud  he  said,  —  "  Swallowed  all  as 
easily  as  you  swallow  a  cup  of  Trebbiano.  Ha  !  I  see  torches  : 
there  must  be  a  dead  body  coming.  The  pestilence  has  been 
spreading,  I  hear." 

"  Santiddio  !  I  hate  the  sight  of  those  biers.  Good-night," 
said  Spini,  hastily  moving  off. 

The  torches  were  really  coming,  but  they  preceded  a  church 
dignitary  who  was  returning  homeward  ;  the  suggestion  of  the 
dead  body  and  the  pestilence  was  Tito's  device  for  getting  rid 
of  Spini  without  telling  him  to  go.  The  moment  he  had 
moved  away,  Tito  turned  to  Komola,  and  said,  quietly,  — 

"  Do  not  be  alarmed  by  anything  that  bestla  has  said,  my 
Romola.  We  will  go  on  now :  I  think  the  rain  has  not 
increased." 

She  was  quivering  with  indignant  resolution ;  it  was  of  no  use 
for  Tito  to  speak  in  that  unconcerned  way.  She  distrusted 
every  word  he  could  utter. 

"I  will  not  go  on,"  she  said.  "I  will  not  move  nearer 
home  until  I  have  some  security  against  this  treachery  being 
perpetrated." 

"  Wait,  at  least,  until  these  torches  have  passed,"  said  Tito, 
with  perfect  self-command,  but  with  a  new  rising  of  dislike  to 
a  wife  who  this  time,  he  foresaw,  might  have  the  power  of 
thwarting  him  in  spite  of  the  husband's  predominance. 

The  torches  passed,  with  the  Vicario  dell'  Arcivescovo,  and 
due  reverence  was  done  by  Tito,  but  Romola  saw  nothing  out- 
ward. If  for  the  defeat  of  this  treachery,  in  which  she  be- 
lieved with  all  the  force  of  long  presentiment,  it  had  been  neces- 
sary at  that  moment  for  her  to  spring  on  her  husband  and  hurl 
herself  with  him  down  a  precipice,  she  felt  as  if  she  could 
have  done  it.  Union  with  this  man  !  At  that  moment  the 
self-quelling  discipline  of  two  years  seemed  to  be  nullified : 
she  felt  nothing  but  that  they  were  divided. 

They  were  nearly  in  darkness  again,  and  could  only  see  each 
other's  faces  dimly. 

"  Tell  me  the  truth,  Tito  —  this  time  tell  me  the  truth,"  said 
Romola,  in  a  low  quivering  voice.    "  It  will  be  safer  for  you." 

"  Why  should  I  desire  to  tell  you  anytliing  else,  my  angry 
saint  ?  "  said  Tito,  with  a  slight  touch  of  contempt,  which  was 
the  vent  of  his  annoyance  ;  "  since  the  truth  is  precisely  that 
over  which  you  have  most  reason  to  rejoice  —  namely,  that  my 
knowing  a  plot  of  Spini's  enables  me  to  secure  the  Frate  from 
falling  a  victim  to  it." 


BY  A   STREET  LAMP.  869 

"  What  is  the  plot  ?  " 

"That  I  decline  to  tell,"  said  Tito.  "It  is  enough  that  the 
Frate's  safety  will  be  secured." 

"  It  is  a  plot  for  drawing  him  outside  the  gates  that  Spini 
may  murder  him." 

"  There  has  been  no  intention  of  murder.  It  is  simply  a 
plot  for  compelling  him  to  obey  the  Pope's  summons  to  Rome. 
But  as  I  serve  the  popular  government,  and  think  the  Frate's 
presence  here  is  a  necessary  means  of  maintaining  it  at  pres- 
ent, I  choose  to  prevent  his  departure.  You  may  go  to  sleep 
with  entire  ease  of  mind  to-night." 

For  a  moment  Romola  was  silent.  Then  she  said,  in  a 
voice  of  anguish,  "  Tito,  it  is  of  no  use :  I  have  no  belief  in 
you." 

She  could  just  discern  his  action  as  he  shrugged  his  shoul- 
ders, and  spread  out  his  palms  in  silence.  That  cold  dislike 
which  is  the  anger  of  unimpassioned  beings  was  hardening 
within  him. 

"If  the  Frate  leaves  the  city  —  if  any  harm  happens  to 
him,"  said  Romola,  after  a  slight  pause,  in  a  new  tone  of  in- 
dignant resolution,  —  "I  will  declare  what  I  have  heard  to 
the  Signoria,  and  you  will  be  disgraced.  What  if  I  am  your 
wife  ?  "  she  went  on,  impetuously  ;  "  I  will  be  disgraced  with 
you.  If  we  are  united,  I  am  that  part  of  you  that  will  save 
you  from  crime.     Others  shall  not  be  betrayed." 

"  I  am  quite  aware  of  what  you  would  be  likely  to  do, 
anima  mia,"  said  Tito,  in  the  coolest  of  his  liquid  tones ; 
"  therefore  if  you  have  a  small  amount  of  reasoning  at  your 
disposal  just  now,  consider  that  if  you  believe  me  in  nothing 
else,  you  may  believe  me  when  I  say  I  will  take  care  of  my- 
self, and  not  put  it  in  your  power  to  ruin  me." 

"  Then  you  assure  me  that  the  Frate  is  warned  —  he  will 
not  go  beyond  the  gates  ?  " 

"  He  shall  not  go  beyond  the  gates." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause,  but  distrust  was  not  to  be 
expelled. 

"I  will  go  back  to  San  Marco  now  and  find  out,"  Romola 
said,  making  a  movement  forward. 

"  You  shall  not !  "  said  Tito,  in  a  bitter  whisper,  seizing  her 
wrists  with  all  his  masculine  force.  "  I  am  master  of  you. 
You  shall  not  set  yourself  in  opposition  to  me." 

There  were  passers-by  approaching.  Tito  had  heard  them, 
and  that  was  why  he  spoke  in  a  whisper.  Romola  was  too 
conscious  of  being  mastered  to  have  struggled,  even  if  she 


370  ROMOLA. 

had  remained  unconscious  that  witnesses  were  at  hand.  But 
she  was  aware  now  of  footsteps  and  voices,  and  her  habitual 
sense  of  personal  dignity  made  her  at  once  yield  to  Tito's 
movement  towards  leading  her  from  the  loggia. 

They  walked  on  in  silence  for  some  time,  under  the  small 
drizzling  rain.  The  first  rush  of  indignation  and  alarm  in 
Romola  had  begun  to  give  way  to  more  complicated  feelings, 
which  rendered  speech  and  action  difficult.  In  that  simpler 
state  of  vehemence,  open  opposition  to  the  husband  from 
whom  she  felt  her  soul  revolting  had  had  the  aspect  of 
temptation  for  her ;  it  seemed  the  easiest  of  all  courses. 
But  now,  habits  of  self-questioning,  memories  of  impulse  sub- 
dued, and  that  proud  reserve  which  all  discipline  had  left  un- 
modified, began  to  emerge  from  the  flood  of  passion.  The 
grasp  of  her  wrists,  which  asserted  her  husband's  physical 
predominance,  instead  of  arousing  a  new  fierceness  in  her,  as 
it  might  have  done  if  her  impetuosity  had  been  of  a  more 
vulgar  kind,  had  given  her  a  momentary  shuddering  horror  at 
this  form  of  contest  with  him.  It  was  the  first  time  they 
had  been  in  declared  hostility  to  each  other  since  her 
flight  and  return,  and  the  check  given  to  her  ardent  resolu- 
tion then,  retained  the  power  to  arrest  her  now.  In  this 
altered  condition  her  mind  began  to  dwell  on  the  probabilities 
that  would  save  her  from  any  desperate  course :  Tito  would 
not  risk  betrayal  by  her;  whatever  had  been  his  original 
intention,  he  must  be  determined  now  by  the  fact  that  she 
knew  of  the  plot.  She  was  not  bound  now  to  do  anything 
else  than  to  hang  over  him  that  certainty,  that  if  he  deceived 
her,  her  lips  would  not  be  closed.     And  then,  it  was  possible 

—  yes,  she  must  cling  to  that  possibility  till  it  was  disproved 

—  that  Tito  had  never  meant  to  aid  in  the  betrayal  of  the 
Frate. 

Tito,  on  his  side,  was  busy  with  thoughts,  and  did  not  speak 
again  till  they  were  near  home.     Then  he  said,  — 

"  Well,  Romola,  have  you  now  had  time  to  recover  calm- 
ness ?  If  so,  you  can  supply  your  want  of  belief  in  me  by  a 
little  rational  inference  :  you  can  see,  I  presume,  that  if  '  had 
had  any  intention  of  furthering  Spini's  plot,  I  should  now  be 
aware  that  the  possession  of  a  fair  Piagnone  for  my  wife, 
who  knows  the  secret  of  the  plot,  would  be  a  serious  obstacle 
in  my  way." 

Tito  assumed  the  tone  which  was  just  then  the  easiest  to 
him,  conjecturing  that  in  Romola's  present  mood  persuasive 
deprecation  would  be  lost  upon  her. 


CHECK.  871 

"  Yes,  Tito,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice,  "  I  think  you  believe 
that  I  would  guard  the  Republic  from  further  treachery. 
You  are  right  to  believe  it :  if  the  Frate  is  betrayed,  I  will 
denounce  you."  She  paused  a  moment,  and  then  said,  with 
an  effort,  "But  it  was  not  so.  I  have  perhaps  spoken  too 
hastily  —  you  never  meant  it.  Only,  why  will  you  seem  to  be 
that  man's  comrade  ?  " 

"  Such  relations  are  inevitable  to  practical  men,  my 
Romola,"  said  Tito,  gratified  by  discerning  the  struggle  with- 
in her.  "  You  fair  creatures  live  in  the  clouds.  Pray  go  to 
rest  with  an  easy  heart,"  he  added,  opening  the  door  for  her. 


CHAPTER  XL VII. 

CHECK. 

Tito's  clever  arrangements  had  been  unpleasantly  frustra- 
ted by  trivial  incidents  which  could  not  enter  into  a  clever 
man's  calculations.  It  was  very  seldom  that  he  walked  with 
Romola  in  the  evening,  yet  he  had  happened  to  be  walking 
with  her  precisely  on  this  evening  when  her  presence  was 
supremely  inconvenient.  Life  was  so  complicated  a  game 
that  the  devices  of  skill  were  liable  to  be  defeated  at  every 
turn  by  air-blown  chances,  incalculable  as  the  descent  of 
thistle-down. 

It  was  not  that  he  minded  about  the  failure  of  Spini's  plot, 
but  he  felt  an  awkward  difl&culty  in  so  adjusting  his  warning 
to  Savonarola  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  Spini  on  the  other,  as 
not  to  incur  suspicion.  Suspicion  roused  in  the  popular 
party  might  be  fatal  to  his  reputation  and  ostensible  position 
in  Florence :  suspicion  roused  in  Dolfo  Spini  might  be  as 
disagreeable  in  its  effects  as  the  hatred  of  a  fierce  dog  not  to 
be  chained. 

If  Tito  went  forthwith  to  the  monastery  to  warn  Savonarola 
before  the  monks  went  to  rest,  his  warning  would  follow  so 
closely  on  his  delivery  of  the  forged  letters  that  he  could  not 
escape  unfavorable  surmises.  He  could  not  warn  Spini  at 
once  without  telling  him  the  true  reason,  since  he  could  not 
immediately  allege  the  discovery  that  Savonarola  had  changed 
his  purpose  ;  and  he  knew  Spini  well  enough  to  know  that  his 
understanding   would   discern    nothing   but    that    Tito    had 


372  ROMOLA. 

"  turned  round  "  and  frustrated  the  plot.  On  the  other  hand, 
by  deferring  his  warning  to  Savonarola  until  the  morning,  he 
would  be  almost  sure  to  lose  the  opportunity  of  warning 
Spini  that  the  Frate  had  changed  his  mind ;  and  the  band  of 
Compagnacci  would  come  back  in  all  the  rage  of  disappoint- 
ment. This  last,  however,  was  the  risk  he  chose,  trusting  to 
his  power  of  soothing  Spini  by  assuring  him  that  the  failure 
was  due  only  to  the  Frate's  caution. 

Tito  was  annoyed.  If  he  had  had  to  smile  it  would  have 
been  an  unusual  effort  to  hiui.  He  was  determined  not  to 
encounter  Romola  again,  and  he  did  not  go  home  that  night. 

She  watched  through  the  night,  and  never  took  off  her 
clothes.  She  heard  the  rain  become  heavier  and  heavier. 
She  liked  to  hear  the  rain :  the  stormy  heavens  seemed  a 
safeguard  against  men's  devices,  compelling  them  to  inaction. 
And  Romola's  mind  was  again  assailed,  cot  only  by  the 
utmost  doubt  of  her  husband,  but  by  doubt  as  to  her  own 
conduct.  What  lie  might  he  not  have  told  her  ?  What 
project  might  he  not  have,  of  which  she  was  still  ignorant  ? 
Every  one  who  trusted  Tito  was  in  danger ;  it  was  useless  to 
try  and  persuade  herself  of  the  contrary.  And  was  not  she 
selfishly  listening  to  the  promptings  of  her  own  pride  when 
she  shrank  from  warning  men  against  him  ?  "  If  her  husband 
was  a  malefactor,  her  place  was  in  the  prison  by  his  side  "  — 
that  might  be ;  she  was  contented  to  fulfil  that  claim.  But  was 
she,  a  wife,  to  allow  a  husband  to  inflict  the  injuries  that 
would  make  him  a  malefactor,  when  it  might  be  in  her  power 
to  prevent  them  ?  Prayer  seemed  impossible  to  her.  The 
activity  of  her  thought  excluded  a  mental  state  of  which  the 
essence  is  expectant  passivity. 

The  excitement  became  stronger  and  stronger.  Her  imagi- 
nation, in  a  state  of  morbid  activity,  conjured  up  possible 
schemes  by  which,  after  all,  Tito  would  have  eluded  her 
threat ;  and  towards  daybreak  the  rain  became  less  violent, 
till  at  last  it  ceased,  the  breeze  rose  again  and  dispersed  the 
clouds,  and  the  morning  fell  clear  on  all  the  objects  around 
her.  It  made  her  uneasiness  all  the  less  endurable.  She 
wrapped  her  mantle  round  her,  and  ran  up  to  the  loggia,  as  if 
there  could  be  anything  in  the  wide  landscape  that  might 
determine  her  action  ;  as  if  there  could  be  anything  but  roofs 
hiding  the  line  of  street  along  which  Savonarola  might  be 
walking  towards  betrayal. 

If  she  went  to  her  godfather,  might  she  not  induce  him, 
without  any  specific  revelation,  to  take  measures  for  prevent- 


CHECK.  373 

ing  Fra  Girolamo  from  passing  the  gates  ?  But  that  might 
be  too  late.  Romola  thought,  with  new  distress,  that  she  had 
failed  to  learn  any  guiding  details  from  Tito,  and  it  was 
already  long  past  seven.  She  must  go  to  San  Marco  :  there 
was  nothing  else  to  be  done. 

She  hurried  down  the  stairs,  she  went  out  into  the  street 
without  looking  at  her  sick  people,  and  walked  at  a  swift 
pace  along  the  Via  de'  Bardi  towards  the  Ponte  Vecchio.  She 
would  go  through  the  heart  of  the  city ;  it  was  the  most 
direct  road,  and,  besides,  in  the  great  Piazza  there  was  a 
chance  of  encountering  her  husband,  who,  by  some  possibility 
to  which  she  still  clung,  might  satisfy  her  of  the  Prate's 
safety,  and  leave  no  need  for  her  to  go  to  San  Marco.  When 
she  arrived  in  front  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio,  she  looked  eagerly 
into  the  pillared  court  ;  then  her  eyes  swept  the  Piazza ;  but 
the  well-known  figure,  once  painted  in  her  heart  by  young 
love,  and  now  branded  there  by  eating  pain,  was  nowhere  to 
be  seen.  She  hurried  straight  on  to  the  Piazza  del  Duomo. 
It  was  already  full  of  movement :  there  were  worshippers 
passing  up  and  down  the  marble  steps,  there  were  men  paus- 
ing for  chat,  and  there  were  market-people  carrying  their 
burdens.  Between  those  moving  figures  Romola  caught  a 
glimpse  of  her  husband.  On  his  way  from  San  Marco  he 
had  turned  into  Nello's  shop,  and  was  now  leaning  against 
the  door-post.  As  Romola  approached  she  could  see  that  he 
was  standing  and  talking,  with  the  easiest  air  in  the  world, 
holding  his  cap  in  his  hand,  and  shaking  back  his  freshly 
combed  hair.  The  contrast  of  this  ease  with  the  bitter 
anxieties  he  had  created  convulsed  her  with  indignation :  the 
new  vision  of  his  hardness  heightened  her  dread.  She  recog- 
nized Cronaca  and  two  other  frequenters  of  San  Marco  stand- 
ing near  her  husband.  It  flashed  through  her  mind,  —  "I  will 
compel  him  to  speak  before  those  men."  And  her  light  step 
brought  her  close  upon  him  before  he  had  time  to  move,  while 
Cronaca  was  saying,  "  Here  comes  Madonna  Romola." 

A  slight  shock  passed  through  Tito's  frame  as  he  felt  him- 
self face  to  face  with  his  wife.  She  was  haggard  with  her 
anxious  watching,  but  there  was  a  flash  of  something  else 
than  anxiety  in  her  eyes  as  she  said,  — 

"  Is  the  Frate  gone  beyond  the  gates  ?  " 

"No,"  said  Tito,  feeling  completely  helpless  before  this 
woman,  and  needing  all  the  self-command  he  possessed  to 
preserve  a  countenance  in  which  there  should  seem  to  be 
nothing  stronger  than  surprise. 


874  ROMOLA. 

"  And  you  are  certain  that  he  is  not  going  ?  "  she  insisted. 

"  I  am  certain  that  he  is  not  going," 

"That  is  enough,"  said  Romola,  as  she  turned  up  the  steps, 
to  take  refuge  in  the  Duomo,  till  she  could  recover  from  her 
agitation. 

Tito  never  had  a  feeling  so  near  hatred  as  that  with  which 
his  eyes  followed  Romola  retreating  up  the  steps. 

There  were  present  not  only  genuine  followers  of  the  Frate, 
but  Ser  Ceccone,  the  notary,  who  at  that  time,  like  Tito  him- 
self, was  secretly  an  agent  of  the  Mediceans. 

Ser  Francesco  di  Ser  Barone,  more  briefly  known  to  infamy 
as  Ser  Ceccone,  was  not  learned,  not  handsome,  not  successful, 
and  the  reverse  of  generous.  He  was  a  tj-aitor  without 
charm.     It  followed  that  he  was  not  fond  of  Tito  Melema. 


CHAPTER  XLVIII. 

COUNTER-CHECK. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  Tito  returned  home. 
Romola,  seated  opposite  the  cabinet  in  her  narrow  room, 
copying  documents,  was  about  to  desist  from  her  work  because 
the  light  was  getting  dim,  when  her  husband  entered.  He 
had  come  straight  to  this  room  to  seek  her,  with  a  thoroughly 
defined  intention,  and  there  was  something  new  to  Romola  in 
his  manner  and  expression  as  he  looked  at  her  silently  on 
entering,  and,  without  taking  off  his  cap  and  mantle,  leaned 
one  elbow  on  the  cabinet,  and  stood  directly  in  front  of  her. 

Romola,  fully  assured  during  the  day  of  the  Frate's  safety, 
was  feeling  the  re-action  of  some  penitence  for  the  access  of 
distrust  and  indignation  which  had  impelled  her  to  address 
her  husband  publicly  on  a  matter  that  she  knew  he  wished  to 
be  private.  She  told  herself  that  she  had  probably  been 
wrong.  The  scheming  duplicity  which  she  had  heard  even 
her  godfather  allude  to  as  inseparable  from  party  tactics 
might  be  sufficient  to  account  for  the  connection  with  Spini, 
without  the  supposition  that  Tito  had  ever  meant  to  further 
the  plot.  She  wanted  to  atone  for  her  impetuosity  by  con- 
fessing that  she  had  been  too  hasty,  and  for  some  hours  her 
mind  had  been  dwelling  on  the  possibility  that  this  confession 
of  hers  might  lead  to  other  frank  words  breaking  the  two 


COUNTER-CHECK.  375 

years'  silence  of  their  hearts.  The  silence  had  been  so  com- 
plete, that  Tito  was  ignorant  of  her  having  fled  from  him  and 
come  back  again ;  they  had  never  approached  an  avowal  of 
that  past  which,  both  in  its  young  love  and  in  the  shock  that 
shattered  the  love,  lay  locked  away  from  them  like  a  banquet- 
room  where  death  had  once  broken  the  feast. 

She  looked  up  at  him  with  that  submission  in  her  glance 
which  belonged  to  her  state  of  self-reproof ;  but  the  subtle 
change  in  his  face  and  manner  arrested  her  speech.  For  a 
few  moments  they  remained  silent,  looking  at  each  other. 

Tito  himself  felt  that  a  crisis  was  come  in  his  married  life. 
The  husband's  determination  to  mastery,  which  lay  deep 
below  all  blandness  and  beseechingness,  had  risen  perma- 
nently to  the  surface  now,  and  seemed  to  alter  his  face,  as  a 
face  is  altered  by  a  hidden  muscular  tension  with  which  a 
man  is  secretly  throttling  or  stamping  out  the  life  from  some- 
thing feeble,  yet  dangerous. 

"  Eomola,"  he  began,  in  the  cool  liquid  tone  that  made  her 
shiver,  "  it  is  time  that  we  should  understand  each  other." 
He  paused. 

"  That  is  what  I  most  desire,  Tito,"  she  said,  faintly.  Her 
sweet  pale  face,  with  all  its  anger  gone  and  nothing  but 
the  timidity  of  self-doubt  in  it,  seemed  to  give  a  marked 
predominance  to  her  husband's  dark  strength. 

'^  You  took  a  step  this  morning,"  Tito  went  on,  "  which  you 
must  now  yourself  perceive  to  have  been  useless  —  which 
exposed  you  to  remark  and  may  involve  me  in  serious 
practical  difficulties." 

"  I  acknowledge  that  I  was  too  hasty  ;  I  am  sorry  for  any 
injustice  I  may  have  done  you."  Romola  spoke  these  words  in 
a  fuller  and  firmer  tone ;  Tito,  she  hoped,  would  look  less  hard 
when  she  had  expressed  her  regret,  and  then  she  could  say 
other  things. 

"  I  wish  you  once  for  all  to  understand,"  he  said,  without 
any  change  of  voice,  "that  such  collisions  are  incomj^atible 
with  our  position  as  husband  and  wife.  I  wish  you  to  reflect 
on  the  mode  in  which  you  were  led  to  that  step,  that  the 
process  may  not  be  repeated." 

"  That  depends  chiefly  on  you,  Tito,"  said  Romola,  taking 
fire  slightly.  It  was  not  at  all  what  she  had  thought  of  say- 
ing, but  we  see  a  very  little  way  before  us  in  mutual  speech. 

"  You  would  say,  I  suppose,"  answered  Tito,  ''  that  nothing 
is  to  occur  in  future  which  can  excite  your  unreasonable  sus- 
picions.    You  were  frank  enough  to  say  last  night  that  you 


376  ROMOLA. 

have  no  belief  in  me.  I  am  not  surprised  at  any  exaggerated 
conclusion  you  may  draw  from  slight  premises,  but  I  wish  to 
point  out  to  you  what  is  likely  to  be  the  fruit  of  your  making 
such  exaggerated  conclusions  a  ground  for  interfering  iu 
affairs  of  which  you  are  ignorant.  Your  attention  is  thor- 
oughly awake  to  what  I  am  saying  ?  " 

He  paused  for  a  reply. 

"  Yes,"  said  Romola,  flushing  in  irrepressible  resentment  at 
this  cold  tone  of  superiority. 

"  Well,  then,  it  may  possibly  not  be  very  long  before  some 
other  chance  words  or  incidents  set  your  imagination  at  work 
devising  crimes  for  me,  and  you  may  perhaps  rush  to  the 
Palazzo  Vecchio  to  alarm  the  Signoria  and  set  the  city  in  an 
uproar.  Shall  I  tell  you  what  may  be  the  result  ?  Not 
simply  the  disgrace  of  your  husband,  to  which  you  look  for- 
ward with  so  much  courage,  but  the  arrest  and  ruin  of  many 
among  the  chief  men  in  Florence,  including  Messer  Bernardo 
del  Nero." 

Tito  had  meditated  a  decisive  move,  and  he  had  made  it. 
The  flush  died  out  of  Romola's  face,  and  her  very  lips  were 
pale  —  an  unusual  effect  with  her,  for  she  was  little  subject 
to  fear.     Tito  perceived  his  success. 

''  You  would  perhaps  flatter  yourself,"  he  went  on,  *'  that 
3^ou  were  performing  a  heroic  deed  of  deliverance  :  you  might 
as  well  try  to  turn  locks  with  fine  words  as  apply  such  notions 
to  the  politics  of  Florence.  The  question  now  is,  not  whether 
you  can  have  any  belief  in  me,  but  whether,  now  you  have 
been  warned,  you  will  dare  to  rush,  like  a  blind  man  with  a 
torch  in  his  hand,  amongst  intricate  affairs  of  which  you 
know  nothing." 

Romola  felt  as  if  her  mind  were  held  in  a  vice  by  Tito's : 
the  possibilities  he  had  indicated  were  rising  before  her  with 
terrible  clearness. 

"  I  am  too  rash,"  she  said.     "  I  will  try  not  to  be  rash." 

'' Eemember,"  said  Tito,  with  unsparing  insistence,  "that 
your  act  of  distrust  towards  me  this  morning  might,  for  aught 
you  knew,  have  had  more  fatal  effects  than  that  sacrifice  of 
your  husband  which  you  have  learned  to  contemplate  without 
flinching." 

"  Tito,  it  is  not  so,"  Romola  burst  forth  in  a  pleading  tone, 
rising  and  going  nearer  to  him,  with  a  desperate  resolution  to 
speak  out.  "  It  is  false  that  I  would  willingly  sacrifice  you. 
It  has  been  the  greatest  effort  of  my  life  to  cling  to  you.  I 
went  away  in  my  anger  two  years  ago,  and  I  came  back  again 


COUNTER-CHECK.  377 

because  I  was  more  bound  to  you  than  to  anything  else  on 
earth.  But  it  is  useless.  You  shut  me  out  from  your  mind. 
You  affect  to  think  of  me  as  a  being  too  unreasonable  to  share 
in  the  knowledge  of  your  affairs.  You  will  be  open  with  me 
about  nothing." 

She  looked  like  his  good  angel  pleading  with  him,  as  she 
bent  her  face  towards  him  with  dilated  eyes,  and  laid  her  hand 
upon  his  arm.  But  Romola's  touch  and  glance  no  longer 
stirred  any  fibre  of  tenderness  in  her  husband.  The  good- 
humored,  tolerant  Tito,  incapable  of  hatred,  incapable  almost 
of  impatience,  disposed  always  to  be  gentle  towards  the  rest 
of  the  world,  felt  himself  becoming  strangely  hard  towards 
this  wife  whose  presence  had  once  been  the  strongest  influ- 
ence he  had  known.  With  all  his  softness  of  disposition,  he 
had  a  masculine  effectiveness  of  intellect  and  purpose  which, 
like  sharpness  of  edge,  is  itself  an  energy,  working  its  way 
without  any  strong  momentum.  Romola  had  an  energy  of  her 
own  which  thwarted  his,  and  no  man,  who  is  not  exceptionally 
feeble,  will  endure  being  thwarted  by  his  wife.  Marriage 
must  be  a  relation  either  of  sympathy  or  of  conquest. 

No  emotion  darted  across  his  face  as  he  heard  Romola  for 
the  first  time  speak  of  having  gone  away  from  him.  His  lips 
only  looked  a  little  harder  as  he  smiled  slightly  and  said,  — 

"My  Romola,  when  certain  conditions  are  ascertained,  we 
must  make  up  our  minds  to  them.  Xo  amount  of  wishing 
will  fill  the  Arno,  as  your  people  say,  or  turn  a  plum  into  an 
orange.  I  have  not  observed  even  that  prayers  have  much 
efficacy  that  way.  You  are  so  constituted  as  to  have  certain 
strong  impressions  inaccessible  to  reason :  I  cannot  share 
those  impressions,  and  you  have  withdrawn  all  trust  from  me 
in  consequence.  You  have  changed  towards  me ;  it  has  fol- 
lowed that  I  have  changed  towards  you.  It  is  useless  to  take 
any  retrospect.  We  have  simply  to  adapt  ourselves  to  altered 
conditions." 

'*  Tito,  it  would  not  be  useless  for  us  to  speak  openly,"  said 
Romola,  with  the  sort  of  exasperation  that  comes  from  using 
living  muscle  against  some  lifeless  insurmountable  resistance. 
"  It  was  the  sense  of  deception  in  you  that  changed  me,  and 
that  has  kept  us  apart.  And  it  is  not  true  that  I  changed 
first.  You  changed  towards  me  the  night  you  first  wore 
that  chain-armor.  You  had  some  secret  from  me  —  it  was 
about  that  old  man  —  and  I  saw  him  again  yesterday.  Tito," 
she  went  on,  in  a  tone  of  agonized  entreaty,  "  if  you  would 
once  tell  me  everything,  let  it  be  what  it  may  —  I  would  not 


378  ROMOLA. 

mind  pain  —  that  there  might  be  no  wall  between  us  !  Is  it 
not  possible  that  we  could  begin  a  new  life  ?  " 

This  time  there  was  a  flash  of  emotion  across  Tito's  face. 
He  stood  perfectly  still ;  but  the  flash  seemed  to  have 
whitened  him.  He  took  no  notice  of  Eomola's  appeal,  but 
after  a  moment's  pause,  said  quietly,  — 

"  Your  impetuosity  about  trifles,  Romola,  has  a  freezing 
influence  that  would  cool  the  baths  of  Nero."  At  these  cut- 
ting words,  Romola  shrank  and  drew  herself  up  into  her 
usual  self-sustained  attitude.  Tito  went  on.  "  If  by  '  that 
old  man '  you  mean  the  mad  Jacopo  di  Nola  who  attempted 
my  life  and  made  a  strange  accusation  against  me,  of  which  I 
told  you  nothing  because  it  would  have  alarmed  you  to  no 
purpose,  he,  poor  wretch,  has  died  in  prison.  I  saw  his  name 
in  the  list  of  dead." 

"I  know  nothing  about  his  accusation,"  said  Romola. 
"  But  I  know  he  is  the  man  whom  I  saw  with  the  rope  round 
his  neck  in  the  Duomo  —  the  man  whose  portrait  Piero  di 
Cosimo  painted,  grasping  your  arm  as  he  saw  him  grasp  it  the 
day  the  French  entered,  the  day  you  first  wore  the  armor." 

"  And  where  is  he  now,  pray  ?  "  said  Tito,  still  pale,  but 
governing  himself. 

"  He  was  lying  lifeless  in  the  street  from  starvation,"  said 
Romola.  "I  revived  him  with  bread  and  wine.  I  brought 
him  to  our  door,  but  he  refused  to  come  in.  Then  I  gave  him 
some  money,  and  he  went  away  without  telling  me  anything. 
But  he  had  found  out  that  I  was  your  wife.      Who  is  he  ?  " 

"  A  man,  half  mad,  half  imbecile,  who  was  once  my  father's 
servant  in  Greece,  and  who  has  a  rancorous  hatred  towards 
me  because  I  got  him  dismissed  for  theft.  Now  you  have  the 
whole  mystery,  and  the  further  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  I 
am  again  in  danger  of  assassination.  The  fact  of  my  wearing 
the  armor,  about  which  you  seem  to  have  thought  so  much, 
must  have  led  you  to  infer  that  I  was  in  danger  from  this 
man.  Was  that  the  reason  you  chose  to  cultivate  his  ac- 
(juaintance  and  invite  him  into  the  house  ?  " 

Romola  was  mute.  To  speak  was  only  like  rushing  with 
bare  breast  against  a  shield. 

Tito  moved  from  his  leaning  posture,  slowly  took  off  his 
cap  and  mantle,  and  pushed  back  his  hair.  He  was  collecting 
himself  for  some  final  words.  And  Romola  stood  upright 
looking  at  him  as  she  might  have  looked  at  some  on-coming 
deadly  force,  to  be  met  only  by  silent  endurance. 

"We  need  not  refer  to  these  matters  again,  Romola,"   he 


COUNTER-CHECK.  379 

said,  precisely  in  the  same  tone  as  that  in  which  he  had 
spoken  at  first.  "  It  is  enough  if  you  will  remember  that  the 
next  time  your  generous  ardor  leads  you  to  interfere  in  politi- 
cal affairs,  you  are  likely,  not  to  save  any  one  from  danger, 
but  to  be  raising  scaffolds  and  setting  houses  on  fire.  You 
are  not  yet  a  sufficiently  ardent  Piagnone  to  believe  that 
Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero  is  the  prince  of  darkness,  and 
Messer  Francesco  Valori  the  archangel  Michael.  I  think  I 
need  demand  no  promise  from  you  ?  " 

"  I  have  understood  you  too  well,  Tito." 

"  It  is  enough,"  he  said,  leaving  the  room. 

Romola  turned  round  with  despair  in  her  face  and  sank  into 
her  seat.  "  0  God,  I  have  tried  —  I  cannot  help  it.  We  shall 
always  be  divided."  Those  words  passed  silently  through  her 
mind.  "  Unless,"  she  said  aloud,  as  if  some  sudden  vision 
had  startled  her  into  speech  —  "  unless  misery  should  come 
and  join  us  !  " 

Tito,  too,  had  a  new  thought  in  his  mind  after  he  had 
closed  the  door  behind  him.  With  the  project  of  leaving 
Florence  as  soon  as  his  life  there  had  become  a  high  enough 
stepping-stone  to  a  life  elsewhere,  perhaps  at  Rome  or  Milan, 
there  was  now  for  the  first  time  associated  a  desire  to  be  free 
from  Romola,  and  to  leave  her  behind  him.  She  had  ceased 
to  belong  to  the  desirable  furniture  of  his  life  :  there  was  no 
possibility  of  an  easy  relation  between  them  without  genuine- 
ness on  his  part.  Genuineness  implied  confession  of  the  past, 
and  confession  involved  a  change  of  purpose.  But  Tito  had 
as  little  bent  that  way  as  a  leopard  has  to  lap  milk  when  its 
teeth  are  grown.  From  all  relations  that  were  not  easy  and 
agreeable,  we  know  that  Tito  shrank :  why  should  he  cling  to 
them? 

And  Romola  had  made  his  relations  difficult  with  others 
besides  herself.  He  had  had  a  troublesome  interview  with 
Dolfo  Spini,  who  had  come  back  in  a  rage  after  an  ineffectual 
soaking  with  rain  and  long  waiting  in  ambush,  and  that  scene 
between  Romola  and  himself  at  Nello's  door,  once  reported  in 
Spini's  ear,  might  be  a  seed  of  something  more  unmanageable 
than  suspicion.  But  now,  at  least,  he  believed  that  he  had 
mastered  Romola  by  a  terror  which  appealed  to  the  strongest 
forces  of  her  nature.  He  had  alarmed  her  affection  and  her 
conscience  by  the  shadowy  image  of  consequences ;  he  had 
arrested  her  intellect  by  hanging  before  it  the  idea  of  a 
hopeless  complexity  in  affairs  which  defied  any  moral  judg- 
ment. 


380  ROMOLA. 

Yet  Tito  was  not  at  ease.  The  world  was  not  yet  quite 
cushioned  with  velvet,  and,  if  it  had  been,  he  could  not  have 
abandoned  himself  to  that  softness  with  thorough  enjoyment ; 
for  before  he  went  out  again  this  evening  he  put  on  his  coat 
of  chain-armor. 


CHAPTER   XLIX. 

THE    PYRAMID    OF    VANITIES. 

The  wintry  days  passed  for  Romola  as  the  white  ships 
pass  one  who  is  standing  lonely  on  the  shore  —  passing  in 
silence  and  sameness,  yet  each  bearing  a  hidden  burden  of 
coming  change.  Tito's  hint  had  mingled  so  much  dread  with 
her  interest  in  the  progress  of  public  affairs  that  she  had 
begun  to  court  ignorance  rather  than  knowledge.  The  threat- 
ening German  Emperor  was  gone  again ;  and,  in  other  ways 
besides,  the  position  of  Florence  was  alleviated ;  but  so  much 
distress  remained  that  Romola's  active  duties  were  hardly 
diminished,  and  in  these,  as  usual,  her  mind  found  a  refuge 
from  its  doubt. 

She  dared  not  rejoice  that  the  relief  which  had  come  in 
extremity  and  had  appeared  to  justify  the  policy  of  the 
Erate's  party  was  making  that  party  so  triumphant,  that 
Francesco  Valori,  hot-tempered  chieftain  of  the  Piagnoni,  had 
been  elected  Gonfaloniere  at  the  beginning  of  the  year,  and 
was  making  haste  to  have  as  much  of  his  own  liberal  way  as 
possible  during  his  two  months  of  power.  That  seemed  for 
the  moment  like  a  strengthening  of  the  party  most  attached 
to  freedom,  and  a  re-enforcement  of  protection  to  Savonarola ; 
but  Romola  was  now  alive  to  every  suggestion  likely  to 
deepen  her  foreboding,  that  whatever  the  present  might  be,  it 
was  only  an  unconscious  brooding  over  the  mixed  germs  of 
Change  which  might  any  day  become  tragic.  And  already  by 
Carnival  time,  a  little  after  mid-February,  her  presentiment 
was  confirmed  by  the  signs  of  a  very  decided  change  :  the 
Mediceans  had  ceased  to  be  passive,  and  were  openly  exerting 
themselves  to  procure  the  election  of  Bernardo  del  Nero  as 
the  new  Gonfaloniere. 

On  the  last  day  of  the  Carnival,  between  ten  and  eleven  in 
the  morning,  Romola  walked  out,  according  to  promise, 
towards  the  Corso  degli  Albizzi,  to  fetch  her  cousin  Brigida, 


THE  PYRAMID   OF   VANITIES.  381 

that  they  might  both  be  ready  to  start  from  the  Via  de'  Bardi 
early  in  the  afternoon,  and  take  their  places  at  a  window 
which  Tito  had  had  reserved  for  them  in  the  Piazza  della 
Signoria,  where  there  was  to  be  a  scene  of  so  new  and 
striking  a  sort,  that  all  Florentine  eyes  must  desire  to  see  it. 
For  the  Piagnoui  were  having  their  own  way  thoroughly  about 
the  mode  of  keeping  the  Carnival.  In  vain  Dolfo  Spini  and 
his  companions  had  struggled  to  get  up  the  dear  old  masques 
and  practical  jokes,  well  spiced  with  indecency.  Such  things 
were  not  to  be  in  a  city  where  Christ  had  been  declared  king. 

Komola  set  out  in  that  languid  state  of  mind  with  which 
every  one  enters  on  a  long  day  of  sight-seeing  purely  for  the 
sake  of  gratifying  a  child,  or  some  dear  childish  friend.  The 
day  was  certainly  an  epoch  in  carnival-keeping ;  but  this  phase 
of  reform  had  not  touched  her  enthusiasm :  and  she  did  not 
know  that  it  was  an  epoch  in  her  own  life  when  another  lot 
would  begin  to  be  no  longer  secretly  but  visibly  intwined 
with  her  own. 

She  chose  to  go  through  the  great  Piazza  that  she  might 
take  a  first  survey  of  the  unparalleled  sight  there  while  she 
was  still  alone.  Entering  it  from  the  south,  she  saw  some- 
thing monstrous  and  many-colored  in  the  shape  of  a  pyramid, 
or,  rather,  like  a  huge  fir-tree,  sixty  feet  high,  with  shelves  on 
the  branches,  widening  and  widening  towards  the  base  till 
they  reached  a  circumference  of  eighty  yards.  The  Piazza 
was  full  of  life  :  slight  young  figures,  in  white  garments,  with 
olive  wreaths  on  their  heads,  were  moving  to  and  fro  about 
the  base  of  the  pyramidal  tree,  carrying  baskets  full  of  bright- 
colored  things ;  and  maturer  forms,  some  in  the  monastic 
frock,  some  in  the  loose  tunics  and  dark-red  caps  of  artists, 
were  helping  and  examining,  or  else  retreating  to  various 
points  in  the  distance  to  survey  the  wondrous  whole  :  while  a 
considerable  group,  amongst  whom  Eomola  recognized  Piero 
di  Cosimo,  standing  on  the  marble  steps  of  Orgagna's  Loggia, 
seemed  to  be  keeping  aloof  in  discontent  and  scorn. 

Approaching  nearer,  she  paused  to  look  at  the  multifarious 
objects  ranged  in  gradation  from  the  base  to  the  summit  of 
the  pyramid.  There  were  tapestries  and  brocades  of  im- 
modest design,  pictures  and  sculptures  held  too  likely  to 
incite  to  vice ;  there  were  boards  and  tables  for  all  sorts  of 
games,  playing-cards  along  with  the  blocks  for  printing  them, 
dice,  and  other  apparatus  for  gambling ;  there  were  worldly 
music  books,  and  musical  instruments  in  all  the  pretty  varie- 
ties of  lute,  drum,  cymbal,  and  trumpet  j  there  were  masks 


382  ROMOLA. 

and  luasquerading-dresses  used  in  the  old  Carnival  shows; 
there  were  handsome  copies  of  Ovid,  Boccaccio,  Petrarca, 
Pulci,  and  other  books  of  a  vain  or  impure  sort ;  there  were 
all  the  implements  of  feminine  vanity  —  rouge-pots,  false 
hair,  mirrors,  perfumes,  powders,  and  transparent  veils  in- 
tended to  provoke  inquisitive  glances  :  lastly,  at  the  very 
summit,  there  was  the  unflattering  effigy  of  a  probably  mythi- 
cal Venetian  merchant,  who  was  understood  to  have  offered  a 
heavy  sum  for  this  collection  of  marketable  abominations, 
and,  soaring  above  him  in  surpassing  ugliness,  the  symbolic 
figure  of  the  old  debauched  Carnival. 

This  was  the  preparation  for  a  new  sort  of  bonfire  —  the 
Burning  of  Vanities.  Hidden  in  the  interior  of  the  pyramid 
was  a  plentiful  store  of  dry  fuel  and  gunpowder;  and  on  this 
last  day  of  the  festival,  at  evening,  the  pile  of  vanities  was 
to  be  set  ablaze  to  the  sound  of  trumpets,  and  the  ugly  old 
Carnival  was  to  tumble  into  the  flames  amid  the  songs  of 
reforming  triumph. 

This  crowning  act  of  the  new  festivities  could  hardly  have 
been  prepared  but  for  a  peculiar  organization  which  had  been 
started  by  Savonarola  two  years  before.  The  mass  of  the 
Florentine  boyhood  and  youth  was  no  longer  left  to  its  own 
genial  promptings  towards  street  mischief  and  crude  dis- 
soluteness. Under  the  training  of  Fra  Domenico,  a  sort  of 
lieutenant  to  Savonarola,  lads  and  striplings,  the  hope  of 
Florence,  were  to  have  none  but  pure  words  on  their  lips,  were 
to  have  a  zeal  for  Unseen  Good  that  should  put  to  shame  the 
lukewarmness  of  their  elders,  and  were  to  know  no  pleasure 
save  of  an  angelic  sort  —  singing  divine  praises  and  walking 
in  white  robes.  It  was  for  them  that  the  ranges  of  seats  had 
been  raised  high  against  the  walls  of  the  Duomo  ;  and  they 
had  been  used  to  hear  Savonarola  appeal  to  them  as  the  future 
'^lory  of  a  city  specially  appointed  to  do  the  work  of  God. 

These  fresh-cheeked  troops  were  the  chief  agents  in  the  re- 
generated merriment  of  the  new  Carnival,  which  was  a  sort  of 
sacred  parody  of  the  old.  Had  there  been  bonfires  in  the  old 
time  ?  There  was  to  be  a  bonfire  now,  consuming  impurity 
from  off  the  earth.  Had  there  been  symbolic  processions  ? 
There  were  to  be  processions  now,  but  the  symbols  were  to  be 
white  robes  and  red  crosses  and  olive  wreaths  —  emblems  of 
peace  and  innocent  gladness  —  and  the  banners  and  images 
held  aloft  were  to  tell  the  triumphs  of  goodness.  Had  there 
been  dancing  in  a  ring  under  the  open  sky  of  the  Piazza,  to 
the  sound  of  choral  voices  chanting  loose  sougs  ?     There  was 


THE  PYRAMID   OF   VANITIES.  383 

to  be  dancing  in  a  ring  now,  but  dancing  of  monks  and  laity 
in  fraternal  love  and  divine  joy,  and  the  music  was  to  be  the 
music  of  hymns.  As  for  the  collections  from  street  passen- 
gers, they  were  to  be  greater  than  ever  —  not  for  gross  and 
superfluous  suppers,  but  —  for  the  benefit  of  the  hungry  and 
needy  ;  and,  besides,  there  was  the  collecting  of  the  Anathema, 
or  the  Vanities  to  be  laid  on  the  great  pyramidal  bonfire. 

Troops  of  young  inquisitors  went  from  house  to  house  on 
this  exciting  business  of  asking  that  the  Anathema  should  be 
given  up  to  them.  Perhaps,  after  the  more  avowed  vanities 
had  been  surrendered,  Madonna,  at  the  head  of  the  household, 
had  still  certain  little  reddened  balls  brought  from  the  Levant, 
intended  to  produce  on  a  sallow  cheek  a  sudden  bloom  of  the 
most  ingenuous  falsity  ?  If  so,  let  her  bring  them  down  and 
cast  them  into  the  basket  of  doom.  Or,  perhaps,  she  had 
ringlets  and  coils  of  "  dead  hair  "  ?  —  if  so,  let  her  bring  them 
to  the  street-door,  not  on  her  head,  but  in  her  hands,  and 
publicly  renounce  the  Anathema  which  hid  the  respectable 
signs  of  age  under  a  ghastly  mockery  of  youth.  And,  in 
reward,  she  would  hear  fresh  young  voices  pronounce  a 
blessing  on  her  and  her  house. 

The  beardless  inquisitors,  organized  into  little  regiments, 
doubtless  took  to  their  work  very  willingly.  To  coerce  peo- 
ple by  shame,  or  other  spiritual  pelting,  into  the  giving  up  of 
things  it  will  probably  vex  them  to  part  with,  is  a  form  of 
piety  to  which  the  boyish  mind  is  most  readily  converted ; 
and  if  some  obstinately  wicked  men  got  enraged  and 
threatened  the  whip  or  the  cudgel,  this  also  was  exciting. 
Savonarola  himself  evidently  felt  about  the  training  of  these 
boys  the  difficulty  weighing  on  all  minds  with  noble  yearnings 
towards  great  ends,  yet  with  that  imperfect  perception  of 
means  which  forces  a  resort  to  some  supernatural  constrain- 
ing influence  as  the  only  sure  hope.  The  Florentine  youth 
had  had  very  evil  habits  and  foul  tongues :  it  seemed  at  first 
an  unmixed  blessing  when  they  were  got  to  shout  "  Viva 
Gesu  !  "  But  Savonarola  was  forced  at  last  to  say  from  the 
pulpit,  "There  is  a  little  too  much  shouting  of  '  Viva  Gesu!^ 
This  constant  uttering  of  sacred  words  brings  them  into  con- 
tempt. Let  me  have  no  more  of  that  shouting  till  the  next 
Festa." 

Nevertheless,  as  the  long  stream  of  white-robed  youthful- 
ness,  with  its  little  red  crosses  and  olive  wreaths,  had  gone  to 
the  Duomo  at  dawn  this  morning  to  receive  the  communion 
from  the  hands  of  Savonarola,  it  was  a  sight  of  beauty ;  and^ 


384  ROMOLA. 

doubtless,  many  of  those  young  souls  were  laying  up  memo- 
ries of  hope  and  awe  that  might  save  them  from  ever  resting 
in  a  merely  vulgar  view  of  their  work  as  men  and  citizens. 
There  is  no  kind  of  conscious  obedience  that  is  not  an  advance 
on  lawlessness,  and  these  boys  became  the  generation  of  men 
who  fought  greatly  and  endured  greatly  in  the  last  struggle 
of  their  Republic.  Now,  in  the  intermediate  hours  between 
the  early  communion  and  dinner-time,  they  were  making  their 
last  perambulations  to  collect  alms  and  vanities,  and  this  was 
why  Romola  saw  the  slim  white  figures  moving  to  and  fro 
about  the  base  of  the  great  pyramid. 

"  What  think  you  of  this  folly.  Madonna  Romola  ?  "  said  a 
brusque  voice  close  to  her  ear.  "  Your  Piagnoni  will  make 
V'mferno  a  pleasant  prospect  to  us,  if  they  are  to  carry  things 
their  own  way  on  earth.  It's  enough  to  fetch  a  cudgel  over 
the  mountains  to  see  painters,  like  Lorenzo  di  Credi  and 
young  Baccio  there,  helping  to  burn  color  out  of  life  in  this 
fashion." 

"  My  good  Piero,"  said  Romola,  looking  up  and  smiling  at 
the  grim  man,  "  even  you  must  be  glad  to  see  some  of  these 
things  burnt.  Look  at  those  gewgaws  and  wigs  and  rouge- 
pots  :  I  have  heard  you  talk  as  indignantly  against  those 
things  as  Fra  Girolamo  himself." 

"  What  then  ?  "  said  Piero,  turning  round  on  her  sharply. 
"I  never  said  a  woman  should  make  a  black  patch  of  herself 
against  the  background.  Va!  Madonna  Antigone,  it's  a  shame 
for  a  woman  with  your  hair  and  shoulders  to  run  into  such 
nousense  —  leave  it  to  women  who  are  not  worth  painting. 
What !  the  most  holy  Virgin  herself  has  always  been  dressed 
well ;  that's  the  doctrine  of  the  Church :  —  talk  of  heresy, 
indeed!  And  I  should  like  to  know  what  the  excellent 
Messer  Bardo  would  have  said  to  the  burning  of  the  divine 
poets  by  these  Frati,  Avho  are  no  better  an  imitation  of  men 
than  if  they  were  onions  with  the  bulbs  uppermost.  Look  at 
that  Petrarca  sticking  up  beside  a  rouge-pot :  do  the  idiots 
pretend  that  the  heavenly  Laura  was  a  painted  harridan  ? 
And  Boccaccio,  now :  do  you  mean  to  say.  Madonna  Romola 
—  you  who  are  fit  to  be  a  model  for  a  wise  Saint  Catherine  of 
Egypt  —  do  you  mean  to  say  you  have  never  read  the  stories 
of  the  immortal  Messer  Giovanni  ?  " 

'•  It  is  true  I  have  read  them,  Piero,"  said  Romola.  "  Some 
of  them  a  great  many  times  over,  when  I  was  a  little  girl.  I 
used  to  get  the  book  down  when  my  father  was  asleep,  so 
that  I  could  read  to  myself." 


TESSA   ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME.  385 

"  Ebbene  ?  "  said  Piero,  in  a  fiercely  challenging  tone. 

"  There  are  some  things  in  them  I  do  not  want  ever  to 
forget,"  said  Romola;  "but  you  must  confess,  Piero,  that  a 
great  many  of  those  stories  are  only  about  low  deceit  for  the 
lowest  ends.  Men  do  not  want  books  to  make  them  think 
lightly  of  vice,  as  if  life  were  a  vulgar  joke.  And  I  cannot 
blame  Fra  Girolamo  for  teaching  that  we  owe  our  time  to 
something  better." 

"  Yes,  yes,  it's  very  well  to  say  so  now  you've  read  them," 
said  Piero,  bitterly,  turning  on  his  heel  and  walking  away 
from  her. 

Romola,  too,  walked  on,  smiling  at  Piero's  innuendo,  with 
a  sort  of  tenderness  towards  the  old  painter's  anger,  because 
she  knew  that  her  father  would  have  felt  something  like  it. 
For  herself,  she  was  conscious  of  no  inward  collision  with  the 
strict  and  sombre  view  of  pleasure  which  tended  to  repress 
poetry  in  the  attempt  to  repress  vice.  Sorrow  and  joy  have 
each  their  peculiar  narrowness ;  and  a  religious  enthusiasm 
like  Savonarola's  which  ultimately  blesses  mankind  by  giving 
the  soul  a  strong  propulsion  towards  sympathy  with  pain, 
indignation  against  wrong,  and  the  subjugation  of  sensual 
desire,  must  always  incur  the  reproach  of  a  great  negation. 
Romola's  life  had  given  her  an  affinity  for  sadness  which 
inevitably  made  her  unjust  towards  merriment.  That  subtle 
result  of  culture  which  we  call  Taste  was  subdued  by  the  need 
for  deeper  motive ;  just  as  the  nicer  demands  of  the  palate 
are  annihilated  by  urgent  hunger.  Moving  habitually 
amongst  scenes  of  suffering,  and  carrying  woman's  heaviest 
disappointment  in  her  heart,  the  severity  which  allied  itself 
with  self-renouncing  beneficent  strength  had  no  dissonance 
for  her. 


CHAPTER   L. 

TESSA    ABROAD    AND    AT    HOME. 


Another  figure  easily  recognized  by  us  —  a  figure  not  clad 
in  black,  but  in  the  old  red,  green,  and  white  —  was  approach- 
ing the  Piazza  that  morning  to  see  the  Carnival.  She  came 
from  an  opposite  point,  for  Tessa  no  longer  lived  on  the  hill 
of  San  Giorgio.  After  what  had  happened  there  with 
Baldassarre,  Tito  had  thought    it    best    for   that   and    other 


886  UOMOLA. 

reasons  to  find  her  a  new  home,  but  still  in  a  quiet  airy 
quarter,  in  a  house  bordering  on  the  wide  garden  grounds 
north  of  the  Porta  Sauta  Croce. 

Tessa  was  not  come  out  sight-seeing  without  special  leave. 
Tito  had  been  with  her  the  evening  before,  and  she  had  kept 
back  the  entreaty  which  she  felt  to  be  swelling  her  heart  and 
throat  until  she  saw  him  in  a  state  of  radiant  ease,  with  one 
arm  round  the  sturdy  Lillo,  and  the  other  resting  gently  on 
her  own  shoulder  as  she  tried  to  make  the  tiny  Ninna  steady 
on  her  legs.  She  was  sure  then  that  the  weariness  with 
which  he  had  come  in  and  flung  himself  into  his  chair  had 
quite  melted  away  from  his  brow  and  lips.  Tessa  had  not 
been  slow  at  learning  a  few  small  stratagems  by  which  she 
might  avoid  vexing  Naldo  and  yet  have  a  little  of  her  own 
way.  She  could  read  nothing  else,  but  she  had  learned  to 
read  a  good  deal  in  her  husband's  face. 

And  certainly  the  charm  of  that  bright,  gentle-humored 
Tito  who  woke  up  under  the  Loggia  de'  Cerchi  on  a  Lenten 
morning  five  years  before,  not  having  yet  given  any  hoo-^a^es 
to  deceit,  never  returned  so  nearly  as  in  the  person  of  Naldo, 
seated  in  that  straight-backed,  carved  arm-chair  which  he  had 
provided  for  his  comfort  when  he  came  to  see  Tessa  and  the 
children.  Tito  himself  was  surprised  at  the  growing  sense  of 
relief  which  he  felt  in  these  moments.  No  guile  was  needed 
towards  Tessa :  she  was  too  ignorant  and  too  innocent  to 
suspect  him  of  anything.  And  the  little  voices  calling  him 
"  Babbo  "  were  very  sweet  in  his  ears  for  the  short  while  that 
he  heard  them.  When  he  thought  of  leaving  Florence,  he 
never  thought  of  leaving  Tessa  and  the  little  ones  behind. 
He  was  very  fond  of  these  round-cheeked,  wide-eyed  human 
things  that  clung  about  him  and  knew  no  evil  of  him.  And 
wherever  alfection  can  spring,  it  is  like  the  green  leaf  and  the 
blossom  —  pure,  and  breathing  purity,  whatever  soil  it  may 
grow  in.  Poor  Romola,  with  all  her  self-sacrificing  effort, 
was  really  helping  to  harden  Tito's  nature  by  chilling  it  with 
a  positive  dislike  which  had  beforehand  seemed  impossible  in 
him  ;  but  Tessa  kept  open  the  fountains  of  kindness. 

"Ninna  is  very  good  without  me  now,"  began  Tessa,  feeling 
her  request  rising  very  high  in  her  throat,  and  letting  Ninna 
seat  herself  on  the  floor.  "I  can  leave  her  with  Monna  Lisa 
any  time,  and  if  she  is  in  the  cradle  and  cries,  Lillo  is  as 
sensible  as  can  be  —  he  goes  and  thumps  Monna  Lisa." 

Lillo,  whose  great  dark  eyes  looked  all  the  darker  because 
his  curls  were  of  a  light  brown  like  his  mother's,  jumped  oif 


TESSA  ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME.  387 

Babbo's  knee,  and  went  forthwith  to  attest  his  intelligence  by- 
thumping  Monna  Lisa,  who  was  shaking  her  head  slowly  over 
her  spinning  at  the  other  end  of  the  room. 

"  A  wonderful  boy  ! "  said  Tito,  laughing. 

"  Isn't  he  ?  "  said  Tessa,  eagerly,  getting  a  little  closer  t<^ 
him ;  "  and  I  might  go  and  see  the  Carnival  to-morrow,  just 
for  an  hour  or  two,  mightn't  I  ?  " 

"  Oh,  you  wicked  pigeon  ! "  said  Tito,  pinching  her  cheek  ; 
"  those  are  your  longings,  are  they  ?  What  have  you  to  do 
with  carnivals  now  you  are  an  old  woman  witli  two  children  ?  " 

"  But  old  women  like  to  see  things,"  said  Tessa,  her  lower 
lip  hanging  a  little.  "Monna  Lisa  said  she  should  like  to  go, 
only  she's  so  deaf  she  can't  hear  what  is  behind  her,  and  she 
thinks  we  couldn't  take  care  of  both  the  children." 

"No,  indeed,  Tessa,"  said  Tito,  looking  rather  grave,  "you 
must  not  think  of  taking  the  children  into  the  crowded 
streets,  else  I  shall  be  angry." 

"  But  I  have  never  been  into  the  Piazza  without  leave," 
said  Tessa,  in  a  frightened,  pleading  tone,  "since  the  Hol}^ 
Saturday,  and  I  think  Nofri  is  dead,  for  you  know  the  poor 
madre  died ;  and  I  shall  never  forget  the  Carnival  1  saw  once ; 
it  was  so  pretty  —  all  roses  and  a  king  and  queen  under  them 
—  and  singing.     I  liked  it  better  than  the  San  Giovanni." 

"But  there's  nothing  like  that  now,  my  Tessa.  They  are 
going  to  make  a  bontire  in  the  Piazza  —  that's  all.  But  I 
cannot  let  you  go  out  by  yourself  in  the  evening." 

"  Oh,  no,  no !  I  don't  want  to  go  in  the  evening.  I  only 
want  to  go  and  see  the  procession  by  daylight.  There  will  be 
a  procession  —  is  it  not  true  ?  " 

"'  Yes,  after  a  sort,"  said  Tito,  "  as  lively  as  a  flight  of 
cranes.  You  must  not  expect  roses  and  glittering  kings  and 
queens,  my  Tessa.  However,  I  suppose  any  string  of  people 
to  be  called  a  procession  will  please  your  blue  eyes.  And 
there's  a  thing  they  have  raised  in  the  Piazza  de'  Signori  for 
the  bonfire.  You  may  like  to  see  that.  But  come  home 
early,  and  look  like  a  grave  little  old  woman ;  and  if  j^ou  see 
any  men  with  feathers  and  swords,  keep  out  of  their  way ; 
they  are  very  fierce,  and  like  to  cut  old  women's  heads  off." 

"  Santa  Madonna  !  where  do  they  come  from  ?  Ah !  you 
are  laughing;  it  is  not  so  bad.  But  I  will  keep  away  from 
them.  Only,"  Tessa  went  on  in  a  whisper,  putting  her  lips 
near  Kaldo's  ear,  "  if  I  might  take  Lillo  with  me  !  He  is 
very  sensible." 

"But   who  will   thump   Monna  Lisa  then,   if   slie   doesn" 


388  ROMOLA. 

hear  ?  "  said  Tito,  finding  it  difficult  not  to  laugh,  but  think- 
ing it  necessary  to  look  serious.  ''No,  Tessa,  you  could  not 
take  care  of  Lillo  if  you  got  into  a  crowd,  and  he's  too  heavy 
for  you  to  carry  him." 

"  It  is  true,"  said  Tessa,  rather  sadly,  "  and  he  likes  to  run 
away.  I  forgot  that.  Then  I  will  go  alone.  But  now  look 
at  Ninna  —  you  have  not  looked  at  her  enough." 

Niuna  was  a  blue-eyed  thing,  at  the  tottering,  tumbling  age 
—  a  fair  solid,  which,  like  a  loaded  die,  found  its  base  with  a 
constancy  that  warranted  prediction.  Tessa  went  to  snatch 
her  up,  and  when  Babbo  was  paying  due  attention  to  the 
recent  teeth  and  other  marvels,  she  said,  in  a  whisper,  "  And 
shall  I  buy  some  confetti  for  the  children  ?  " 

Tito  drew  some  small  coins  from  his  scarsella,  and  poured 
them  into  her  palm. 

"  That  will  buy  no  end,"  said  Tessa,  delighted  at  this  abun- 
dance. "  I  shall  not  mind  going  without  Lillo  so  much,  if  I 
bring  him  something." 

So  Tessa  set  out  in  the  morning  towards  the  great  Piazza 
where  the  bonfire  was  to  be.  She  did  not  think  the  February 
breeze  cold  enough  to  demand  further  covering  than  her  green 
woollen  dress.  A  mantle  would  have  been  oppressive,  for  it 
would  have  hidden  a  new  necklace  and  a  new  clasp,  mounted 
with  silver,  the  only  ornamental  presents  Tito  liad  ever  made 
her.  Tessa  did  not  think  at  all  of  showing  her  figure,  for  no 
one  had  ever  told  her  it  was  pretty ;  but  she  was  quite  sure 
that  her  necklace  and  clasp  were  of  the  prettiest  sort  ever 
worn  by  the  richest  contadina,  and  she  arranged  her  white 
hood  over  her  head  so  that  the  front  of  her  necklace  might 
be  well  displayed.  These  ornaments,  she  considered,  must 
inspire  respect  for  her  as  the  wife  of  some  one  who  could 
afford  to  buy  them. 

She  tripped  along  very  cheerily  in  the  February  sunshine, 
thinking  much  of  the  purchases  for  the  little  ones,  with  which 
she  was  to  fill  her  small  basket,  and  not  thinking  at  all  of  any 
one  who  might  be  observing  her.  Yet  her  descent  from  her 
upper  story  into  the  street  had  been  watched,  and  she  was 
being  kept  in  sight  as  she  walked  by  a  person  who  had  often 
waited  in  vain  to  see  if  it  were  not  Tessa  who  lived  in  that 
house  to  which  he  had  more  than  once  dogged  Tito.  Baldas- 
sarre  was  carrying  a  package  of  yarn :  he  was  constantly 
employed  in  that  way,  as  a  means  of  earning  his  scanty  bread, 
and  keeping  the  sacred  fire  of  vengeance  alive  ;  and  he  had 
come   out   of   his   way  this   morning,   as  he   had  often  done 


TESSA   ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME.  889 

before,  that  he  might  pass  by  the  house  to  which  he  had  fol- 
lowed Tito  in  the  evening.  His  long  imprisonment  had  so 
intensified  his  timid  suspicion  and  his  belief  in  some  diabolic 
fortune  favoring  Tito,  that  he  had  not  dared  to  pursue  him, 
except  under  cover  of  a  crowd  or  of  the  darkness ;  he  felt, 
with,  instinctive  horror,  that  if  Tito's  eyes  fell  vipon  him,  he 
should  again  be  held  up  to  obloquy,  again  be  dragged  away  ;  his 
weapon  would  be  taken  from  him,  and  he  should  be  cast  helpless 
into  a  prison-cell.  His  fierce  purpose  had  become  as  stealthy 
as  a  serpent's,  which  depends  for  its  prey  on  one  dart  of  the 
fang.  Justice  was  weak  and  unfriended ;  and  he  could  not 
hear  again  the  voice  that  pealed  the  promise  of  vengeance  in 
the  Duomo  ;  he  had  been  there  again  and  again,  but  that  voice, 
too,  had  apparently  been  stifled  by  cunning  strong-armed 
wickedness.  For  a  long  while,  Baldassarre's  ruling  thought 
was  to  ascertain  whether  Tito  still  wore  the  armor,  for  now  at 
last  his  fainting  hope  would  have  been  contented  with  a  success- 
ful stab  on  this  side  the  grave ;  but  he  would  never  risk  his 
precious  knife  again.  It  was  a  weary  time  he  had  had  to  wait 
for  the  chance  of  answering  this  question  by  touching  Tito's 
back  in  the  press  of  the  street.  Since  then,  the  knowledge 
that  the  sharp  steel  was  useless,  and  that  he  had  no  hope  but 
in  some  new  device,  had  fallen  with  leaden  weight  on  his 
enfeebled  mind.  A  dim  vision  of  winning  one  of  those  two 
wives  to  aid  him  came  before  him  continually,  and  continually 
slid  away.  The  wife  who  had  lived  on  the  hill  was  no  longer 
there.  If  he  could  find  her  again,  he  might  grasp  some 
thread  of  a  project,  and  work  his  way  to  more  clearness. 

And  this  morning  he  had  succeeded.  He  was  quite  certain 
now  where  this  wife  lived,  and  as  he  walked,  bent  a  little 
under  his  burden  of  yarn,  yet  keeping  the  green  and  white 
figure  in  sight,  his  mind  was  dwelling  upon  her  and  her  cir- 
cumstances as  feeble  eyes  dwell  on  lines  and  colors,  trying  to 
interpret  them  into  consistent  significance. 

Tessa  had  to  pass  through  various  long  streets  without 
seeing  any  other  sign  of  the  Carnival  than  unusual  groups  of 
the  country  people  in  their  best  garments,  and  that  disposi- 
tion in  everybody  to  chat  and  loiter  which  marks  the  early 
hours  of  a  holiday,  before  the  spectacle  has  begun.  Pres- 
ently, in  her  disappointed  search  for  remarkable  objects,  her 
eyes  fell  on  a  man  with  a  pedler's  basket  before  him,  who 
seemed  to  be  selling  nothing  but  little  red  crosses  to  all  the 
passengers.  A  little  red  cross  would  be  pretty  to  hang  up 
over  her  bed ;  it  would  also  help  to  keep  olf  harm,  and  would 


390  ROMOLA. 

perhaps  make  Niuna  stronger.  Tessa  went  to  the  other  side 
of  the  street  that  she  might  ask  the  pedler  the  price  of  the 
crosses,  fearing  that  they  would  cost  a  little  too  much  for  her 
to  spare  from  her  purchase  of  sweets.  The  pedler 's  back  had 
been  turned  towards  her  hitherto,  but  when  she  came  near 
him  she  recognized  au  old  acquaintance  of  the  Mercato, 
Bratti  Ferravecchi,  and,  accustomed  to  feel  that  she  was  to 
avoid  old  acquaintances,  she  turned  away  again  and  passed 
to  the  other  side  of  the  street.  But  Bratti's  eye  was  too  well 
practised  in  looking  out  at  the  corner  after  possible  customers, 
for  her  movement  to  have  escaped  him,  and  she  was  presently 
arrested  by  a  tap  on  the  arm  from  one  of  the  red  crosses. 

"  Young  woman,"  said  Bratti,  as  she  unwillingly  turned  her 
head,  "you  come  from  some  castello  a  good  way  off,  it  seems  to 
me,  else  you'd  never  think  of  walking  about,  this  blessed  Carni- 
val, without  a  red  cross  in  your  hand.  Santa  Madonna !  Four 
white  quattrini  is  a  small  price  to  pay  for  your  soul  —  prices 
rise  in  purgatory,  let  me  tell  you." 

"Oh,  I  should  like  one,"  said  Tessa,  hastily,  "but  I  couldn't 
spare  four  white  quattrini." 

Bratti  had  at  first  regarded  Tessa  too  abstractedly  as  a  mere 
customer  to  look  at  her  with  any  scrutiny,  but  when  she 
began  to  speak  he  exclaimed,  "  By  the  head  of  San  Giovanni, 
it  must  be  the  little  Tessa,  and  looking  as  fresh  as  a  ripe 
apple  !  What !  you've  done  none  the  worse,  then,  for  running 
away  from  father  Nofri  ?  You  were  in  the  right  of  it,  for  he 
goes  on  crutches  now,  and  a  crabbed  fellow  with  crutches  is 
dangerous ;  he  cau  reach  across  the  house  and  beat  a  woman 
as  he  sits." 

"  I'm  married,"  said  Tessa,  rather  demurely,  remembering 
Naldo's  command  that  she  should  behave  with  gravity  ;  "and 
my  husband  takes  great  care  of  me." 

"Ah,  then,  you've  fallen  on  your  feet!  Nofri  said  you 
were  good-for-nothing  vermin  ;  but  what  then  ?  An  ass  may 
bray  a  good  while  before  he  shakes  the  stars  down.  I  alwa^'s 
said  3^ou  did  well  to  run  away,  and  it  isn't  often  Bratti's  in  the 
wrong.  Well,  and  so  you've  got  a  husband  and  plenty  of 
money.  Then  you'll  never  think  much  of  giving  four  white 
quattrini  for  a  red  cross.  I  get  no  profit ;  but  what  with  the 
famine  and  the  new  religion,  all  other  merchandise  is  gone 
down.  You  live  in  the  country  where  the  chestnuts  are  plenty, 
eh  ?     You've  never  wanted  for  polenta,  I  can  see." 

"  No,  I've  never  wanted  anything,"  said  Tessa,  still  on  hei 
jru.ird. 


TESSA   ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME.  391 

"Then  you  can  afford  to  buy  a  cross.  I  got  a  Padre  to  bless 
them,  and  you  get  blessing  and  all  for  four  quattrini.  It 
isn't  for  the  profit ;  I  hardly  get  a  danaro  by  the  whole  lot. 
But  then  they're  holy  wares,  and  it's  getting  harder  and 
harder  work  to  see  your  way  to  Paradise :  the  very  Carnival  is 
like  Holy  Week,  and  the  least  yon  can  do  to  keep  the  Devil 
from  getting  the  upper  hand  is  to  buy  a  cross.  God  guard 
you  !  think  what  the  Devil's  tooth  is !  You've  seen  him  bit- 
ing the  man  in  San  Giovanni,  I  should  hope  ?  " 

Tessa  felt  much  teased  and  frightened.  "  Oh,  Bratti,"  she 
said,  with  a  discomposed  face,  "  I  want  to  buy  a  great  many 
confetti :  I've  got  little  Lillo  and  Niuna  at  home.  And  nice 
colored  sweet  things  cost  a  great  deal.  And  they  will  not  like 
the  cross  so  well,  though  I  know  it  would  be  good  to  have  it." 

"Come,  then,"  said  Bratti,  fond  of  laying  up  a  store  of 
merits  by  imagining  possible  extortions  and  then  heroically 
renouncing  them,  "  since  you're  an  old  acquaintance,  you  shall 
have  it  for  two  quattrini.  It's  making  you  a  present  of  the 
cross,  to  say  nothing  of  the  blessing." 

Tessa  was  reaching  out  her  two  quattrini  with  trembling 
hesitation,  when  Bratti  said  abruptly,  "  Stop  a  bit !  Where  do 
3'ou  live  ?  " 

"  Oh,  a  long  way  off,"  she  answered,  almost  automatically, 
being  pre-occupied  with  her  quattrini ;  '"  beyond  San  Ambrogio, 
in  the  Via  Piccola,  at  the  top  of  the  house  where  the  wood  is 
stacked  below." 

"  Very  good,"  said  Bratti,  in  a  patronizing  tone  ;  "  then  I'll 
let  you  have  the  cross  on  trust,  and  call  for  the  money.  So 
you  live  inside  the  gates  ?     Well,  well,  I  shall  be  passing." 

"  No,  no ! "  said  Tessa,  frightened  lest  Naldo  should  be 
angry  at  this  revival  of  an  old  acquaintance.  "  I  can  spare 
the  money.     Take  it  now." 

"  No,"  said  Bratti,  resolutely  ;  "  I'm  not  a  hard-hearted  ped- 
ler.  I'll  call  and  see  if  you've  got  any  rags,  and  you  shall 
make  a  bargain.  See,  here's  the  cross  :  and  there's  Pippo's 
shop  not  far  behind  you :  you  can  go  and  fill  your  basket,  and 
I  must  go  and  get  mine  empty.     Addio,  jnccina." 

Bratti  went  on  his  way,  and  Tessa,  stimulated  to  change 
her  money  into  confetti  before  further  accident,  went  into 
Pippo's  shop,  a  little  fluttered  by  the  thought  that  she  had 
let  Bratti  know  more  about  her  than  her  husband  would  ap- 
prove. There  were  certainly  more  dangers  in  coming  to  see 
the  Carnival  than  in  staying  at  home ;  and  she  would  have 
felt  this  more  strongly  if  she  had  known  that  the  wicked  old 


392  ROMOLA. 

man,  who  had  wanted  to  kill  her  husband  on  the  hill,  was  still 
keeping  her  in  sight.  But  she  had  not  noticed  the  man  with 
the  burden  on  his  back. 

The  consciousness  of  having  a  small  basketful  of  things  to 
make  the  children  glad,  dispersed  her  anxiety,  and  as  she 
entered  the  Via  de'  Libraj  her  face  had  its  usual  expression  of 
childlike  content.  And  now  she  thought  there  was  really  a 
procession  coming,  for  she  saw  white  robes  and  a  banner,  and 
her  heart  began  to  palpitate  with  expectation.  She  stood  a 
little  aside,  but  in  that  narrow  street  there  was  the  pleasure 
of  being  obliged  to  look  very  close.  The  banner  was  pretty  : 
it  was  the  Holy  Mother  with  the  Babe,  whose  love  for  her 
Tessa  had  believed  in  more  and  more  since  she  had  had  her 
babies ;  and  the  figures  in  white  had  not  only  green  wreaths 
on  their  heads,  but  little  red  crosses  by  their  side,  which 
caused  her  some  satisfaction  that  she  also  had  her  red  cross. 
Certainly,  they  looked  as  beautiful  as  the  angels  on  the  clouds, 
and  to  Tessa's  mind  they  too  had  a  background  of  cloud,  like 
everything  else  that  came  to  her  in  life.  How  and  whence 
did  they  come  ?  She  did  not  mind  much  about  knowing. 
But  one  thing  surprised  her  as  newer  than  wreaths  and 
crosses ;  it  was  that  some  of  the  white  figures  carried  baskets 
between  them.     What  could  the  baskets  be  for  ? 

But  now  they  were  very  near,  and,  to  her  astonishment, 
they  wheeled  aside  and  came  straight  up  to  her.  She  trem- 
bled as  she  would  have  done  if  St.  JNIichael  in  the  picture  had 
shaken  his  head  at  her,  and  was  conscious  of  nothing  but  ter- 
rified wonder  till  she  saw  close  to  her  a  round  boyish  face, 
lower  than  her  own,  and  heard  a  treble  voice  saying,  ''  Sister, 
you  carry  the  Anathema  about  you.  Yield  it  up  to  the 
blessed  Gesii,  and  He  will  adorn  you  with  the  gems  of  His 
grace." 

Tessa  was  only  more  frightened,  understanding  nothing. 
Her  first  conjecture  settled  on  her  basket  of  sweets.  They 
wanted  that,  these  alarming  angels.  Oh,  dear,  dear !  She 
looked  down  at  it. 

"  No,  sister,"  said  a  taller  youth,  pointing  to  her  necklace 
and  the  clasp  of  her  belt,  "  it  is  those  vanities  that  are  the 
Anathema.  Take  off  that  necklace  and  unclasp  that  belt,  that 
they  may  be  burned  in  the  holy  Bonfire  of  Vanities,  and  save 
you  from  burning." 

"  It  is  the  truth,  my  sister,"  said  a  still  taller  youth,  evi- 
dently the  archangel  of  this  band.  "  Listen  to  these  voices 
speaking  the  divine  message.     You  already  carry  a  red  cross  : 


TESSA   ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME.  393 

let  that  be  your  only  adornment.  Yield  up  your  necklace  and 
belt,  and  you  shall  obtain  grace." 

This  was  too  much.  Tessa,  overcome  with  awe,  dared  not 
say  "  no,"  but  she  was  equally  unable  to  render  up  her  be- 
loved necklace  and  clasp.  Her  pouting  lips  were  quivering, 
the  tears  rushed  to  her  eyes,  and  a  great  drop  fell.  For  a 
moment  she  ceased  to  see  anything ;  she  felt  nothing  but  con- 
fused terror  and  misery.  Suddenly  a  gentle  hand  was  laid  on 
her  arm,  and  a  soft,  wonderful  voice,  as  if  the  Holy  Madonna 
were  speaking,  said,  "  Do  not  be  afraid ;  no  one  shall  harm 
you." 

Tessa  looked  up  and  saw  a  lady  in  black,  with  a  young 
heavenly  face  and  loving  hazel  eyes.  She  had  never  seen  any 
one  like  this  lady  before,  and  under  other  circumstances  might 
have  had  awestruck  thoughts  about  her ;  but  now  everything 
else  was  overcome  by  the  sense  that  loving  protection  was 
near  her.  The  tears  only  fell  the  faster,  relieving  her  swell- 
ing heart,  as  she  looked  up  at  the  heavenly  face,  and,  putting 
her  hand  to  her  necklace,  said  sobbingly,  — 

"  I  can't  give  them  to  be  burnt.  My  husband  —  he  bought 
them  for  me  —  and  they  are  so  pretty  —  and  Ninna  —  oh,  I 
wish  I'd  never  come  !  " 

"  Do  not  ask  her  for  them,"  said  Eomola,  speaking  to  the 
white-robed  boys  in  a  tone  of  mild  authority.  "  It  answers  no 
good  end  for  people  to  give  up  such  things  against  their  will. 
That  is  not  what  Fra  Girolamo  approves :  he  would  have  such 
things  given  up  freely." 

Madonna  Romola's  word  was  not  to  be  resisted,  and  the 
white  train  moved  on.  They  even  moved  with  haste,  as  if 
some  new  object  had  caught  their  eyes ;  and  Tessa  felt  with 
bliss  that  they  were  gone,  and  that  her  necklace  and  clasp 
were  still  with  her. 

"  Oh,  I  will  go  back  to  the  house,"  she  said,  still  agitated ; 
"  I  will  go  nowhere  else.  But  if  I  should  meet  them  again, 
and  you  not  be  there  ?  "  she  added,  expecting  everything  from 
this  heavenly  lady. 

"  Stay  a  little,"  said  Komola.  "  Come  with  me  under  this 
doorway,  and  we  will  hide  the  necklace  and  clasp,  and  then 
you  will  be  in  no  danger." 

She  led  Tessa  under  the  archway,  and  said,  "iSTow,  can  we 
find  room  for  your  necklace  and  belt  in  your  basket  ?  Ah ! 
your  basket  is  full  of  crisp  things  that  will  break  :  let  us  be 
careful,  and  lay  the  heavy  necklace  under  them." 

It  was  like  a  change  in  a  dream  to  Tessa  —  the  escape  from 


394  ROMOLA. 

nightmare  into  floating  safety  and  joy  —  to  find  herself  taken 
care  of  by  this  lady,  so  lovely,  and  powerful,  and  gentle. 
She  let  Romola  unfasten  her  necklace  and  clasp,  while  she 
herself  did  nothing  but  look  up  at  the  face  that  bent  over  her. 

"They  are  sweets  for  Lillo  and  Ninna,"  she  said, as  Romola 
carefully  lifted  up  the  light  parcels  in  the  basket,  and  placed 
the  ornaments  below  them. 

"  Those  are  your  children  ?  "  said  Romola,  smiling.  "  And 
you  would  rather  go  home  to  them  than  see  any  more  of  the 
Carnival  ?  Else  3'ou  have  not  far  to  go  to  the  Piazza  de'  Sig- 
nori,  and  there  you  would  see  the  pile  for  the  great  bonfire." 

"  No,  oh  no  ! "  said  Tessa,  eagerly  ;  "•  I  shall  never  like  bon- 
fires again.     I  Avill  go  back." 

"You  live  at  some  castello,  doubtless,"  said  Romola,  not 
waiting  for  an  answer.     "  Towards  which  gate  do  you  go  ?  " 

"Towards  For'  Santa  Croce." 

"  Come,  then,"  said  Romola,  taking  her  by  the  hand  and 
leading  her  to  the  corner  of  a  street  nearly  opposite.  "  If  you 
go  down  there,"  she  said,  pausing,  "you  will  soon  be  in  a 
straight  road.  And  I  must  leave  you  now,  because  some  one 
else  expects  me.  You  will  not  be  frightened.  Your  pretty 
things  are  quite  safe  now.    Addio." 

"Addio,  Madonna,"  said  Tessa,  almost  in  a  whisper,  not 
knowing  what  else  it  would  be  right  to  say  ;  and  in  an  instant 
the  heavenly  lady  was  gone.  Tessa  turned  to  catch  a  last 
glimpse,  but  she  only  saw  the  tall  gliding  figure  vanish  round 
the  projecting  stonework.  So  she  went  on  her  way  in  wonder, 
longing  to  be  once  more  safely  housed  with  Monna  Lisa, 
undesirous  of  carnivals  forevermore. 

Baldassarre  had  kept  Tessa  in  sight  till  the  moment  of  her 
parting  with  Romola  :  then  he  went  away  with  his  bundle  of 
yarn.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  discerned  a  clew  which 
might  guide  him  if  he  could  only  grasp  the  necessary  details 
firmlj'  enough.  He  had  seen  the  two  wives  together,  and  the 
sight  had  brought  to  his  conceptions  that  vividness  which  had 
been  wanting  before.  His  power  of  imagining  facts  needed  to 
be  re-enforced  continually  by  the  senses.  The  tall  wife  was 
the  noble  and  rightful  wife ;  she  had  the  blood  in  her  that 
would  be  readily  kindled  to  resentment ;  she  would  know  what 
scholarship  was,  and  how  it  might  lie  locked  in  by  the  obstruc- 
tions of  the  stricken  body,  like  a  treasure  buried  by  earthquake. 
She  could  believe  him  :  she  would  be  inclined  to  believe  him, 
if  he  proved  to  her  that  her  husband  was  unfaithful.  Women 
cared  about  that :  they  would  take  vengeance  for  that.    If  this 


MONNA   BRIG  IDA'S   CONVERSION.  395 

wife  of  Tito's  loved  him,  she  would  have  a  sense  of  injury 
which  Baldassarre's  mind  dwelt  on  with  keen  longing,  as  if  it 
would  be  the  strength  of  another  Will  added  to  his  own,  the 
strength  of  another  mind  to  form  devices. 

Both  these  wives  had  been  kind  to  Baldassarre,  and  their 
acts  towards  him,  being  bound  up  with  the  very  image  of  them, 
had  not  vanished  from  his  memory  ;  yet  the  thought  of  their 
pain  could  not  present  itself  to  him  as  a  check.  To  him  it 
seemed  that  pain  was  the  order  of  the  world  for  all  except  the 
hard  and  base.  If  any  were  innocent,  if  any  were  noble,  where 
could  the  utmost  gladness  lie  for  them  ?  Where  it  lay  for 
him  —  in  unconquerable  hatred  and  triumphant  vengeance. 
But  he  must  be  cautious  :  he  must  watch  this  wife  in  the  Via 
de'  Bardi,  and  learn  more  of  her;  for  even  here  frustration 
was  possible.  There  was  no  power  for  him  now  but  in 
patience. 


CHAPTER   LI. 

MONNA    BRIGIDA's    CONVERSION. 

When  Romola  said  that  some  one  else  expected  her,  she 
meant  her  cousin  Brigida,  but  she  was  far  from  suspecting  how 
much  that  good  kinswoman  was  in  need  of  her.  Returning 
together  towards  the  Piazza,  they  had  descried  the  company 
of  youths  coming  to  a  stand  before  Tessa,  and  when  Romola, 
having  approached  near  enough  to  see  the  simple  little  conta- 
dina's  distress,  said,  "  Wait  for  me  a  moment,  cousin,"  Monna 
Brigida  said  hastily,  "  Ah,  I  will  not  go  on :  come  for  me  to 
Boni's  shop,  —  I  shall  go  back  there."  i 

The  truth  was,  Monna  Brigida  had  a  consciousness  on  the 
one  hand  of  certain  "  vanities  "  carried  on  her  person,  and  on 
the  other  of  a  growing  alarm  lest  the  Piagnoni  should  be  right 
in  holding  that  rouge,  and  false  hair,  and  pearl  embroidery, 
endamaged  the  soul.  Their  serious  view  of  things  filled  the 
air  like  an  odor;  nothing  seemed  to  have  exactly  the  same 
flavor  as  it  used  to  have  ;  and  there  was  the  dear  child  Romola, 
in  her  youth  and  beauty,  leading  a  life  that  was  uncomfortably 
suggestive  of  rigorous  demands  on  woman.  A  widow  at  fifty- 
five  whose  satisfaction  has  been  largely  drawn  from  what  she 
thinks  of  her  own  person,  and  what  she  believes  others  think 
of  it,  requires  a  great  fund  of  imagination  to  keep  her  spirits 


396  ROMOLA. 

buoyant.  And  Monna  Brigida  had  begun  to  have  frequent 
struggles  at  her  toilet.  If  her  soul  would  prosper  better  with- 
out them,  was  it  really  worth  while  to  put  on  the  rouge  and 
the  braids  ?  But  when  she  lifted  up  the  hand-mirror  and  saw 
a  sallow  face  with  baggy  cheeks,  and  crows'-feet  that  were  not 
to  be  dissimulated  by  any  simpering  of  the  lips  —  when  she 
parted  her  gray  hair,  and  let  it  lie  in  simple  Piagnone  fashion 
round  her  face,  her  courage  failed.  Monna  Berta  would 
certainly  burst  out  laughing  at  her,  and  call  her  an  old  hag, 
and  as  Monna  Berta  was  really  only  fifty-two,  she  had  a 
superiority  which  would  make  the  observation  cutting.  Every 
woman  who  was  not  a  Piagnone  would  give  a  shrug  at  the 
sight  of  her,  and  the  men  would  accost  her  as  if  she  were  their 
grandmother.  Whereas,  at  fifty-five  a  woman  was  not  so  very 
old  —  she  only  required  making  up  a  little.  So  the  rouge  and 
the  braids  and  the  embroidered  berretta  went  on  again,  and 
Monna  Brigida  was  satisfied  with  the  accustomed  effect ;  as 
for  her  neck,  if  she  covered  it  up,  people  might  suppose  it  was 
too  old  to  show,  and,  on  the  contrary,  with  the  necklaces  round 
it,  it  looked  better  than  Monna  Berta's.  This  very  day,  when 
she  was  preparing  for  the  Piagnone  Carnival,  such  a  struggle 
had  occurred,  and  the  conflicting  fears  and  longings  which 
caused  the  struggle,  caused  her  to  turn  back  and  seek  refuge 
in  the  druggist's  shop  rather  than  encounter  the  collectors  of 
the  Anathema  when  Komola  was  not  by  her  side.  But  Monna 
Brigida  was  not  quite  rapid  enough  in  her  retreat.  She  had 
been  descried,  even  before  she  turned  away,  by  the  white-robed 
boys  in  the  rear  of  those  who  wheeled  round  towards  Tessa, 
and  the  willingness  with  which  Tessa  was  given  up  was, 
perhaps,  slightly  due  to  the  fact  that  part  of  the  troop  had 
already  accosted  a  personage  carrying  more  markedly  upon 
her  the  dangerous  weight  of  the  Anathema.  It  happened  that 
several  of  this  troop  were  at  the  youngest  age  taken  into 
peculiar  training  ;  and  a  small  fellow  of  ten,  his  olive  wreath 
resting  above  cherubic  cheeks  and  wide  brown  eyes,  his 
imagination  really  possessed  with  a  hovering  awe  at  existence 
as  something  in  which  great  consequences  impended  on  being 
good  or  bad,  his  longings  nevertheless  running  in  the  direction 
of  mastery  and  mischief,  was  the  first  to  reach  Monna  Brigida 
and  place  himself  across  her  path.  She  felt  angry,  and  looked 
for  an  open  door,  but  there  was  not  one  at  hand,  and  by  attempt- 
ing to  escape  now,  she  would  only  make  things  worse.  But 
it  was  not  the  cherubic-faced  young  one  who  first  addressed 
her;  it  was  a  youth  of  fifteen,  who  held  one  handle  of  a  wide 
basket. 


MONNA  BRIG  I  DA- S  CONVERSION.  397 

"  Venerable  mother ! "  he  began,  "  the  blessed  Jesus  com- 
mands you  to  give  up  the  Anathema  which  you  carry  upon 
you.  That  cap  embroidered  with  pearls,  those  jewels  that 
fasten  up  your  false  hair  —  let  them  be  given  up  and  sold  for 
the  poor;  and  cast  the  hair  itself  away  from  you,  as  a  lie 
that  is  only  fit  for  burning.  Doubtless,  too,  you  have  other 
jewels  under  your  silk  mantle." 

"  Yes,  lady,"  said  the  youth  at  the  other  handle,  who  had 
many  of  Fra  Girolamo's  phrases  by  heart,  "  they  are  too 
heavy  for  you:  they  are  heavier  than  a  millstone,  and  are 
weighting  you  for  perdition.  Will  you  adorn  yourself  with 
the  hunger  of  the  poor,  and  be  proud  to  carry  God's  curse  upon 
your  head  ?  " 

"  In  truth  you  are  old,  buona  madre,"  said  the  cherubic  boy, 
in  a  sweet  soprano.  '•  You  look  very  ugly  with  the  red  on 
your  cheeks  and  that  black  glistening  hair,  and  those  fine 
things.  It  is  only  Satan  who  can  like  to  see  you.  Your 
Angel  is  sorry.     He  wants  you  to  rub  away  the  red." 

The  little  fellow  snatched  a  soft  silk  scarf  from  the  basket, 
and  held  it  towards  ISIonna  Brigida,  that  she  might  use  it  as 
her  guardian  angel  desired.  Her  anger  and  mortification  were 
fast  giving  way  to  spiritual  alarm.  Monna  Berta  and  that 
cloud  of  witnesses,  highly  dressed  society  in  general,  were  not 
looking  at  her,  and  she  was  surrounded  by  young  monitors, 
(vhose  white  robes,  and  wreaths,  and  red  crosses,  and  dreadful 
candor,  had  something  awful  in  their  unusualness.  Her 
Franciscan  confessor,  Fra  Cristoforo,  of  Santa  Croce,  was  not 
at  hand  to  re-enforce  her  distrust  of  Dominican  teaching,  and 
she  was  helplessly  possessed  and  shaken  by  a  vague  sense  that 
a  supreme  warning  was  come  to  her.  Unvisited  by  the  least 
suggestion  of  any  other  course  that  was  open  to  her,  she  took 
the  scarf  that  was  held  out,  and  rubbed  her  cheeks,  with 
trembling  submissiveness. 

"  It  is  well,  madonna,"  said  the  second  youth.  "  It  is  a  holy 
beginning.  And  when  you  have  taken  those  vanities  from 
your  head,  the  dew  of  heavenly  grace  will  descend  on  it." 
The  infusion  of  mischief  was  getting  stronger,  and  putting  his 
hand  to  one  of  the  jewelled  pins  that  fastened  her  braids  to 
the  berretta  he  drew  it  out.  The  heavy  black  plait  fell  down 
over  Monna  Brigida's  face,  and  dragged  the  rest  of  the  head- 
gear forward.  It  was  a  new  reason  for  not  hesitating :  she 
put  up  her  hands  hastily,  undid  the  other  fastenings,  and  flung 
down  into  the  basket  of  doom  her  beloved  crimson-velvet  ber- 
retta, with  all  its  unsurpassed  embroidery  of  seed-pearls,  and 


398  ROM  OLA. 

stood  an  unrouged  woman,  with  gray  hair  pushed  backward 
from  a  face  where  certain  deep  lines  of  age  had  triumphed 
ever  embonjiobit. 

But  the  berretta  was  not  allowed  to  lie  in  the  basket.  With 
impish  zeal  the  youngsters  lifted  it,  and  held  it  up  pitilessly, 
with  the  false  hair  dangling. 

"  See,  venerable  mother,"  said  the  taller  youth,  "  what  ugly 
lies  you  have  delivered  yourself  from !  And  now  you  look 
like  the  blessed  Saint  Anna,  the  mother  of  the  Holy  Virgin." 

Thoughts  of  going  into  a  convent  forthwith,  and  never 
showing  herself  in  the  world  again,  were  rushing  through 
Monna  Brigida's  mind.  There  was  nothing  possible  for  her 
but  to  take  care  of  her  soul.  Of  course,  there  were  spectators 
laughing :  she  had  no  need  to  look  round  to  assure  herself  of 
that.  Well !  it  would,  perhaps,  be  better  to  be  forced  to  think 
more  of  Paradise.  But  at  the  thought  that  the  dear  accus- 
tomed world  was  no  longer  in  her  choice,  there  gathered  some 
of  those  hard  tears  which  just  moisten  elderly  eyes,  and  she 
could  see  but  dimly  a  large  rough  hand  holding  a  red  cross, 
which  was  suddenly  thrust  before  her  over  the  shoulders  of 
the  boys,  while  a  strong  guttural  voice  said,  — 

"  Only  four  quattrini,  madonna,  blessing  and  all !  Buy  it. 
You'll  find  a  comfort  in  it  now  your  wig's  gone.  Deh  !  what 
are  we  sinners  doing  all  our  lives  ?  Making  soup  in  a  basket, 
and  getting  nothing  but  the  scum  for  our  stomachs.  Better 
buy  a  blessing,  madonna !  Only  four  quattrini ;  the  profit  is 
not  so  much  as  the  smell  of  a  danaro,  and  it  goes  to  the 
poor." 

Monna  Brigida,  in  dim-eyed  confusion,  was  proceeding  to 
the  further  submission  of  reaching  money  from  her  embroidered 
scarsella,  at  present  hidden  by  her  silk  mantle,  when  the  group 
round  her,  which  she  had  not  yet  entertained  the  idea  of  es- 
caping, opened  before  a  figure  as  welcome  as  an  angel  loosing 
prison-bolts. 

''  Romola,  look  at  me  ! "  said  Monna  Brigida,  in  a  piteous 
tone,  putting  out  both  her  hands. 

The  white  troop  was  already  moving  away,  with  a  slight 
consciousness  that  its  zeal  about  the  headgear  had  been  super- 
abundant enough  to  afford  a  dispensation  from  any  further 
demand  for  penitential  offerings. 

"  Dear  cousin,  don't  be  distressed,"  said  Romola,  smitten 
with  pity,  yet  hanlly  able  to  help  smiling  at  the  sudden 
apparition  of  her  kinswoman  in  a  genuine,  natural  guise, 
strangely  contrasted  with  all  memories  of  her.     She  took  the 


MONNA   BRiaiDA'S  CONVERSION.  399 

black  drapery  from  her  own  head,  and  threw  it  over  Monna 
Brigida's.  "There,"  she  went  on  soothingly,  "no  one  will 
remark  you  now.  We  will  turn  down  the  Via  del  Palagio  and 
go  straight  to  our  house." 

They  hastened  away,  Monna  Brigida  grasping  Romola's 
hand  tightly,  as  if  to  get  a  stronger  assurance  of  her  being 
actually  there. 

"  Ah,  my  Roraola,  my  dear  child  I  "  said  the  short  fat  woman, 
hurrying  with  frequent  steps  to  keep  pace  with  the  majestic 
young  figure  beside  her ;  "  what  an  old  scarecrow  I  am  !  I 
must  be  good  —  I  mean  to  be  good  !  " 

"  Yes,  yes  ;  buy  a  cross  !  "  said  the  guttural  voice,  while  the 
rough  hand  was  thrust  once  more  before  Monna  Brigida :  for 
Bratti  was  not  to  be  abashed  by  Romola's  presence  into  re- 
nouncing a  probable  customer,  and  had  quietly  followed  up 
their  retreat.  "  Only  four  quattrini,  blessing  and  all  —  and  if 
there  was  any  profit,  it  would  all  go  to  the  poor." 

Monna  Brigida  would  have  been  compelled  to  pause,  even  if 
she  had  been  in  a  less  submissive  mood.  She  put  up  one  hand 
deprecatingly  to  arrest  Romola's  remonstrance,  and  with  the 
other  reached  out  a  grosso,  worth  many  white  quattrini,  saying, 
in  an  entreating  tone,  — 

"  Take  it,  good  man,  and  begone." 

"  You're  in  the  right,  madonna,"  said  Bratti,  taking  the  coin 
quickly,  and  thrusting  the  cross  into  her  hand  ;  "  I'll  not  offer 
you  change,  for  I  might  as  well  rob  you  of  a  mass.  What ! 
we  must  all  be  scorched  a  little,  but  you'll  come  off  the  easier ; 
better  fall  from  the  window  than  the  roof.  A  good  Easter  and 
a  good  year  to  you  !  " 

"  Well,  Romola,"  cried  Monna  Brigida,  pathetically,  as 
Bratti  left  them,  "  if  I'm  to  be  a  Piagnone  it's  no  matter  how 
I  look ! " 

"Dear  cousin,"  said  Romola,  smiling  at  her  affectionately, 
"  you  don't  know  how  much  better  you  look  than  you  ever  did 
before.  I  see  now  how  good-natured  your  face  is,  like  your- 
self. That  red  and  finery  seemed  to  thrust  themselves  forward 
and  hide  expression.  Ask  our  Piero  or  any  other  painter  if 
he  would  not  rather  paint  your  portrait  now  than  before.  I 
think  all  lines  of  the  human  face  have  something  either  touch- 
ing or  grand,  unless  they  seem  to  come  from  low  passions. 
How  fine  old  men  are,  like  my  godfather  !  Why  should  not 
old  women  look  grand  and  simple  ?  " 

"  Yes,  when  one  gets  to  be  sixty,  my  Romola,"  said  Brigida, 
relapsing  a  little  ;  "  but  I'm  only  fifty-five,  and  Monna  Berta, 


400  ROM  OLA. 

and  everybody  —  but  it's  no  use :  I  will  be  good,  like  you. 
Your  motlier,  if  she'd  been  alive,  would  have  been  as  old  as  I 
am ;  we  were  cousins  together.  One  must  either  die  or  get  old. 
But  it  doesn't  matter  about  being  old,  if  one's  a  Piagnone." 


CHAPTER   LIL 

A    PROPHETESS. 

The  incidents  of  that  Carnival  day  seemed  to  Romola  to  carry 
no  other  personal  consequences  to  her  than  the  new  care  of 
supporting  poor  cousin  Brigida  in  her  fluctuating  resignation 
to  age  and  gray  hairs  ;  but  they  introduced  a  Lenten  time  in 
which  she  was  kept  at  a  high  pitch  of  mental  excitement  and 
active  effort. 

Bernardo  del  Nero  had  been  elected  Gonfaloniere.  By  great 
exertions  the  Medicean  party  had  so  far  triumphed,  and  that 
triumph  had  deepened  Romola's  presentiment  of  some  secretly 
prepared  scheme  likely  to  ripen  either  into  success  or  betrayal 
during  these  two  months  of  her  godfather's  authority.  Every 
morning  the  dim  daybreak  as  it  peered  into  her  room  seemed 
to  be  that  havinting  fear  coming  back  to  her.  Every  morning 
the  fear  went  with  her  as  she  passed  through  the  streets  on 
her  way  to  the  early  sermon  in  the  Duomo :  but  there  she 
gradually  lost  the  sense  of  its  chill  presence,  as  men  lose  the 
dread  of  death  in  the  clash  of  battle. 

In  the  Duomo  she  felt  herself  sharing  in  a  passionate  con- 
flict which  had  wider  relations  than  any  enclosed  within  the 
walls  of  Florence.  For  Savonarola  was  preaching  —  preaching 
the  last  course  of  Lenten  sermons  he  was  ever  allowed  to  flnish 
in  the  Duomo :  he  knew  that  excommunication  was  imminent, 
and  he  had  reached  the  point  of  defying  it.  He  held  up  the 
condition  of  the  Church  in  the  terrible  mirror  of  his  unflinch- 
ing speech,  which  called  things  by  their  right  names  and  dealt 
in  no  polite  periphrases  ;  he  proclaimed  with  heightening  con- 
fidence the  advent  of  renovation  —  of  a  moment  when  there 
would  be  a  general  revolt  against  corruption.  As  to  his  own 
destiny,  he  seemed  to  have  a  double  and  alternating  prevision  : 
sometimes  he  saw  himself  taking  a  glorious  part  in  that  re- 
volt, sending  forth  a  voice  that  would  be  heard  through  all 
Christendom,  and  making  the  dead  body  of  the  Church  tremble 


A   PROPHETESS.  401 

into  new  life,  as  the  body  of  Lazarus  trembled  when  the 
Divine  voice  pierced  the  sei^ulchre ;  sometimes  he  saw  no 
prospect  for  himself  but  persecution  and  martyrdom :  —  this 
life  for  him  was  only  a  vigil,  and  only  after  death  would  come 
the  dawn. 

The  position  was  one  which  must  have  had  its  impressive- 
ness  for  all  minds  that  were  not  of  the  dullest  order,  even  if 
they  were  inclined,  as  Macchiavelli  was,  to  interpret  the 
"Frate's  character  by  a  key  that  presupposed  no  loftiness.  To 
llomola,  whose  kindred  ardor  gave  her  a  firm  belief  in  Savon- 
arola's genuine  greatness  of  purpose,  the  crisis  was  as  stirring 
as  if  it  had  been  part  of  her  personal  lot.  It  blent  itself  as 
an  exalting  memory  with  all  her  daily  labors  ;  and  those  labors 
were  calling  not  only  for  difficult  perseverance,  but  for  new 
courage.  Famine  had  never  yet  taken  its  flight  from  Florence, 
and  all  distress,  by  its  long  continuance,  was  getting  harder 
to  bear ;  disease  was  spreading  in  the  crowded  city,  and  the 
Plague  was  expected.  As  Romola  walked,  often  in  weariness, 
among  the  sick,  the  hungry,  and  the  murmuring,  she  felt 
it  good  to  be  inspired  by  something  more  than  her  pity  —  by 
the  belief  in  a  heroism  struggling  for  sublime  ends,  towards 
which  the  daily  action  of  her  pity  could  only  tend  feebly,  as 
the  dews  that  freshen  the  weedy  ground  to-day  tend  to  pre- 
pare an  unseen  harvest  in  the  years  to  come. 

But  that  mighty  music  which  stirred  her  in  the  Duomo  was 
not  without  its  jarring  notes.  Since  those  first  days  of  glow- 
ing hope  when  the  Frate,  seeing  the  near  triumph  of  good  in 
the  reform  of  the  Republic  and  the  coming  of  the  French 
deliverer,  had  preached  peace,  charity,  and  oblivion  of  politi- 
cal differences,  there  had  been  a  marked  change  of  condi- 
tions :  political  intrigue  had  been  too  obstinate  to  allow  of 
the  desired  oblivion ;  the  belief  in  the  French  deliverer,  who 
had  turned  his  back  on  his  high  mission,  seemed  to  have 
wrought  harm ;  and  hostility,  both  on  a  petty  and  on  a  grand 
scale,  was  attacking  the  Prophet  with  new  weapons  and  new 
determination. 

It  followed  that  the  spirit  of  contention  and  self-vindica- 
tion pierced  more  and  more  conspicuously  in  his  sermons ; 
that  he  was  urged  to  meet  the  popular  demands  not  only  by 
increased  insistence  and  detail  concerning  visions  and  private 
revelations,  but  by  a  tone  of  defiant  confidence  against  object- 
ors ;  and  from  having  denounced  the  desire  for  the  miracu- 
lous, and  declared  that  miracles  had  no  relation  to  true  faith. 
he  had  come  to  assert  that  at  the  riglit  moment  the  Divine 


402  ROMOLA. 

power  would  attest  the  truth  of  his  prophetic  preaching  by  a 
miracle.  And  continually,  in  the  rapid  transitions  of  excited 
feeling,  as  the  vision  of  triumphant  good  receded  behind  the 
actual  predominance  of  evil,  the  threats  of  coming  vengeance 
against  vicious  tyrants  and  corrupt  priests  gathered  some 
impetus  from  personal  exasperation,  as  well  as  from  indig- 
nant zeal. 

In  the  career  of  a  great  public  orator  who  yields  himself  to 
the  inspiration  of  the  moment,  that  conflict  of  selfish  and  un- 
selfish emotion  which  in  most  men  is  hidden  in  the  chamber 
of  the  soul,  is  brought  into  terrible  evidence :  the  language  of 
the  inner  voices  is  written  out  in  letters  of  fire. 

But  if  the  tones  of  exasperation  jarred  on  Romola,  there 
was  often  another  member  of  Fra  Girolamo's  audience  to 
whom  they  were  the  only  thrilling  tones,  like  the  vibration  of 
deep  bass  notes  to  the  deaf.  Baldassarre  had  found  out  that 
the  wonderful  Frate  was  preaching  again,  and  as  often  as  he 
could,  he  went  to  hear  the  Lenten  sermon,  that  he  might 
drink  in  the  threats  of  a  voice  which  seemed  like  a  power  on 
the  side  of  justice.  He  went  the  more  because  he  had  seen 
that  Romola  went  too ;  for  he  was  waiting  and  watching  for 
a  time  when  not  only  outward  circumstances,  but  his  own 
varying  mental  state,  would  mark  the  right  moment  for  seek- 
ing an  interview  with  her.  Twice  Romola  had  caught  sight 
of  his  face  in  the  Duonio  —  once  when  its  dark  glance  was 
fixed  on  hers.  She  wished  not  to  see  it  again,  and  yet  she 
looked  for  it,  as  men  look  for  the  re-appearance  of  a  portent. 
But  any  revelation  that  might  be  yet  to  come  about  this  old 
man  was  a  subordinate  fear  now  :  it  referred,  she  thought, 
only  to  the  past,  and  her  anxiety  was  almost  absorbed  by  the 
present. 

Yet  the  stirring  Lent  passed  by  ;  April,  the  second  and 
final  month  of  her  godfather's  supreme  authority,  was  near 
its  close ;  and  nothing  had  occurred  to  fulfil  her  presentiment. 
In  the  public  mind,  too,  there  had  been  fears,  and  rumors 
had  spread  from  Rome  of  a  menacing  activity  on  the  part  of 
Piero  de'  Medici ;  but  in  a  few  days  the  suspected  Bernardo 
would  go  out  of  power. 

Romola  was  trying  to  gather  some  courage  from  the  review 
of  her  futile  fears,  when  on  the  twenty-seventh,  as  she  was 
walking  out  on  her  usual  errands  of  mercy  in  the  afternoon, 
she  was  met  by  a  messenger  from  Camilla  Rucellai,  chief 
among  the  feminine  seers  of  Florence,  desiring  her  presence 
forthwith  on  matters  of  the  highest  moment.     Romola,  who 


A  PROPHETESS.  403 

shrank  with  unconquerable  repulsion  from  the  shrill  volubility 
of  those  illuminated  women,  and  had  just  now  a  special 
repugnance  towards  Camilla  because  of  a  report  that  she  had 
announced  revelations  hostile  to  Bernardo  del  Nero,  was  at 
first  inclined  to  send  back  a  fiat  refusal.  Camilla's  message 
might  refer  to  public  affairs,  and  Romola's  immediate 
prompting  was  to  close  her  ears  against  knowledge  that 
might  only  make  her  mental  burden  heavier.  But  it  had  be- 
come so  thoroughly  her  habit  to  reject  her  impulsive  choice, 
and  to  obey  passively  the  guidance  of  outward  claims,  that, 
reproving  herself  for  allowing  her  presentiments  to  make  her 
cowardly  and  selfish,  she  ended  by  compliance,  and  went 
straight  to  Camilla. 

She  found  the  nervous,  gray-haired  woman  in  a  chamber 
arranged  as  much  as  possible  like  a  convent  cell.  The  thin 
fingers  clutching  Romola  as  she  sat,  and  the  eager  voice 
addressing  her  at  first  in  a  loud  whisper,  caused  her  a 
physical  shrinking  that  made  it  difficult  for  her  to  keep  her 
seat. 

Camilla  had  a  vision  to  communicate  —  a  vision  in  which 
it  had  been  revealed  to  her  by  Romola's  Angel,  that  Romola 
knew  certain  secrets  concerning  her  godfather,  Bernardo  del 
Xero,  which,  if  disclosed,  might  save  the  Republic  from  peril. 
Camilla's  voice  rose  louder  and  higher  as  she  narrated  her 
vision,  and  ended  by  exhorting  Romola  to  obey  the  command 
of  her  Angel,  and  separate  herself  from  the  enemy  of  God. 

Romola's  impetuosity  was  that  of  a  massive  nature,  and, 
except  in  moments  when  she  was  deeply  stirred,  her  manner 
was  calm  and  self-controlled.  She  had  a  constitutional  disgust 
for  the  shallow  excitability  of  women  like  Camilla,  whose 
faculties  seemed  all  wrought  up  into  fantasies,  leaving  nothing 
for  emotion  and  thought.  The  exhortation  was  not  yet  ended 
when  she  started  up  and  attempted  to  wrench  her  arm  from 
Camilla's  tightening  grasp.  It  was  of  no  use.  The  prophetess 
kept  her  hold  like  a  crab,  and,  only  incited  to  more  eager 
exhortation  by  Romola's  resistance,  was  carried  beyond  her 
own  intention  into  a  shrill  statement  of  other  visions  which 
were  to  corroborate  this.  Christ  himself  had  appeared  to  her 
and  ordered  her  to  send  his  commands  to  certain  citizens  in 
office  that  they  should  throw  Bernardo  del  Nero  from  the 
window  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio.  Fra  Girolamo  himself  knew 
vif  it,  and  had  not  dared  this  time  to  say  that  the  vision  Avas 
not  of  Divine  authority. 

"And    since   then,"   said   Camilla,    in   her   excited  treble, 


404  ROMOLA. 

straining  upward  with  wild  eyes  towards  Romola's  face,  "  the 
Blessed  Infant  has  come  to  me  and  laid  a  wafer  of  sweetness 
on  my  tongue  in  token  of  his  pleasure  that  I  had  done  his 
will." 

"  Let  me  go ! "  said  Romola,  in  a  deep  voice  of  anger. 
"  God  grant  you  are  mad !  else  you  are  detestably  wicked !  " 

The  violence  of  her  effort  to  be  free  was  too  strong  for 
Camilla  now.  She  wrenched  away  her  arm  and  rushed  out  of 
the  room,  not  pausing  till  she  had  hurriedly  gone  far  along 
the  street,  and  found  herself  close  to  the  church  of  the  Badia. 
She  had  but  to  pass  behind  the  curtain  under  the  old  stone  arch, 
and  she  would  find  a  sanctuary  shut  in  from  the  noise  and 
hurry  of  the  street,  where  all  objects  and  all  uses  suggested 
the  thought  of  an  eternal  peace  subsisting  in  the  midst  of 
turmoil. 

She  turned  in,  and  sinking  down  on  the  step  of  the  altar  in 
front  of  Filippino  Lippi's  serene  Virgin  appearing  to  St. 
Bernard,  she  waited  in  hope  that  the  inward  tumult  which 
agitated  her  would  by  and  by  subside. 

The  thought  which  pressed  on  her  the  most  acutely  was 
that  Camilla  could  allege  Savonarola's  countenance  of  her 
wicked  folly.  Romola  did  not  for  a  moment  believe  that  he 
had  sanctioned  the  throwing  of  Bernardo  del  ISTero  from  the 
window  as  a  Divine  suggestion ;  she  felt  certain  that  there 
was  falsehood  or  mistake  in  that  allegation.  Savonarola 
had  become  more  and  more  severe  in  his  views  of  resistance 
to  malcontents ;  but  the  ideas  of  strict  law  and  order  were 
fundamental  to  all  his  political  teaching.  Still,  since  he 
knew  the  possibly  fatal  effects  of  visions  like  Camilla's,  since 
he  had  a  marked  distrust  of  such  spirit-seeing  women,  and 
kept  aloof  from  them  as  much  as  possible,  why,  with  his 
readiness  to  denounce  wrong  from  the  pulpit,  did  he  not 
publicly  denounce  these  pretended  revelations  which  brought 
new  darkness  instead  of  light  across  the  conception  of  a 
Supreme  Will  ?  Why  ?  The  answer  came  with  painful 
clearness  :  he  was  fettered  inwardly  by  the  consciousness  that 
such  revelations  were  not,  in  their  basis,  distinctly  separable 
from  his  own  visions  ;  he  was  fettered  outwardly  by  the  fore- 
seen consequence  of  raising  a  cry  against  himself  even  among 
members  of  his  own  party,  as  one  who  would  suppress  all 
Divine  inspiration  of  which  he  himself  was  not  the  vehicle  — 
he  or  his  confidential  and  supplementary  seer  of  visions,  Fra 
Salvestro. 

Romola,  kneeling  with  buried  face   on  the   altar  step,  was 


A  PROPHETESS.  405 

enduring  one  of  those  sickening  moments,  when  the  enthu- 
siasm which  had  come  to  her  as  the  onl}^  energy  strong 
enough  to  make  life  worthy,  seemed  to  be  inevitably  bound  up 
with  vain  dreams  and  wilful  eye-shutting.  Her  mind  rushed 
back  with  a  new  attraction  towards  the  strong  worldly  sense, 
the  dignified  prudence,  the  untheoretic  virtues  of  her  god- 
father, who  was  to  be  treated  as  a  sort  of  Agag,  because  he 
held  that  a  more  restricted  form  of  government  was  better 
than  the  Great  Council,  and  because  he  would  not  pretend  to 
forget  old  ties  to  the  banished  family. 

But  with  this  last  thought  rose  the  presentiment  of  some 
plot  to  restore  the  Medici ;  and  then  again  she  felt  that  the 
popular  party  was  half  justified  in  its  fierce  suspicion.  Again 
she  felt  that  to  keep  the  Government  of  Florence  pure,  and 
to  keep  out  a  vicious  rule,  was  a  sacred  cause  ;  the  Frate  was 
right  there,  and  had  carried  her  understanding  irrevocably 
with  him.  But  at  this  moment  the  assent  of  her  understand- 
ing went  alone ;  it  was  given  unwillingly.  Her  heart  was  re- 
coiling from  a  right  allied  to  so  much  narrowness;  a  right 
apparently  entailing  that  hard  systematic  judgment  of  men 
which  measures  them  by  assents  and  denials  quite  superficial 
to  the  manhood  within  them.  Her  affection  and  respect  were 
clinging  with  new  tenacity  to  her  godfather  and  with  him  to 
those  memories  of  her  father  which  were  in  the  same  opposi- 
tion to  the  division  of  men  into  sheep  and  goats  by  the  easy 
mark  of  some  political  or  religious  symbol. 

After  all  has  been  said  that  can  be  said  about  the  widening 
influence  of  ideas,  it  remains  true  that  they  would  hardly  be 
such  strong  agents  unless  they  were  taken  in  a  solvent  of 
feeling.  The  great  world-struggle  of  developing  thought  is 
continually  foreshadowed  in  the  struggle  of  the  affections, 
seeking  a  justification  for  love  and  hope. 

If  Romola's  intellect  had  been  less  capable  of  discerning 
the  complexities  in  human  things,  all  the  early  loving  associa- 
tions of  her  life  would  have  forbidden  her  to  accept  implicitly 
the  denunciatory  exclusiveness  of  Savonarola.  She  had 
simply  felt  that  his  mind  had  suggested  deeper  and  more 
efficacious  truth  to  her  than  any  other,  and  the  large  breathing- 
room  she  found  in  this  grand  view  of  human  duties  had  made 
her  patient  towards  that  part  of  his  teaching  which  she  could 
not  absorb,  so  long  as  its  practical  effect  came  into  collision 
with  no  strong  force  in  her.  But  now  a  sudden  insurrection 
of  feeling  had  brought  about  that  collision.  Her  indignation, 
once  roused  by  Camilla's  visions,  could  not  pause  there,  but 


406  ROM  OLA. 

ran  like  an  illuminating  fire  over  all  the  kindred  facts  in 
Savonarola's  teaching,  and  for  the  moment  she  felt  what  was 
true  in  the  scornful  sarcasms  she  heard  continually  flung 
against  him,  more  keenly  than  she  felt  what  was  false. 

But  it  was  an  illumination  that  made  all  life  look  ghastly 
to  her.  Where  were  the  beings  to  whom  she  could  cling, 
with  whom  she  could  work  and  endure,  with  the  belief  that 
she  was  working  for  the  right  ?  On  the  side  from  which 
moral  energy  came  lay  a  fanaticism  from  which  she  was 
shrinking  with  newly  startled  repulsion ;  on  the  side  to 
which  she  was  drawn  by  affection  and  memory,  there  was  the 
presentiment  of  some  secret  plotting,  which  her  judgment 
told  her  would  not  be  unfairly  called  crime.  And  still  sur- 
mounting every  other  thought  was  the  dread  inspired  by 
Tito's  hints,  lest  that  presentiment  should  be  converted  into 
knowledge,  in  such  a  way  that  she  would  be  torn  by  irrecon- 
cilable claims. 

Calmness  would  not  come  even  on  the  altar-steps ;  it  would 
not  come  from  looking  at  the  serene  picture  where  the  saint, 
writing  in  the  rocky  solitude,  was  being  visited  by  faces  with 
celestial  peace  in  them.  Romola  was  in  the  hard  press  of 
human  difficulties,  and  that  rocky  solitude  was  too  far  oif. 
She  rose  from  her  knees  that  she  might  hasten  to  her  sick 
people  in  the  courtyard,  and  by  some  immediate  beneficent 
action,  revive  that  sense  of  worth  in  life  which  at  this  mo- 
ment was  unfed  by  any  wider  faith.  But  when  she  turned 
round,  she  found  herself  face  to  face  with  a  man  who  was 
standing  only  two  yards  off  her.     The  man  was  Baldassarre. 


CHAPTER   LIII. 

ON    SAN    MINIATO. 

"I  WOULD  speak  with  you,"  said  Baldassarre,  as  Romola 
looked  at  him  in  silent  expectation.  Tt  was  plain  that  he  had 
follov/ed  her,  and  had  been  waiting  for  her.  She  was  going  at 
last  to  know  the  secret  about  him. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  with  the  same  sort  of  submission  that  she 
might  have  shown  under  an  imposed  penance.  "  But  you 
wish  to  go  where  no  one  (!an  hear  us  ?  " 

"  Where  he  will  not  come  upon  us,"  said  Baldassarre,  turn- 


ON  SAN  MINI  A  TO.  407 

ing  and  glancing  behind  him  timidly.  "  Out  —  in  the  air  — 
away  from  the  streets." 

"  I  sometimes  go  to  San  Miniato  at  this  hour,"  said  Eomola. 
"  If  you  like,  I  will  go  now,  and  you  can  follow  me.  It  is 
far,  but  we  can  be  solitary  there." 

He  nodded  assent,  and  Romola  set  out.  To  some  women  it 
might  have  seemed  an  alarming  risk  to  go  to  a  coiuparatively 
solitary  spot  with  a  man  who  had  some  of  the  outward  signs 
of  that  madness  which  Tito  attributed  to  him.  But  Romola 
was  not  given  to  personal  fears,  and  she  was  glad  of  the  dis- 
tance that  interposed  some  delay  before  another  blow  fell  on 
her.  The  afternoon  was  far  advanced,  and  the  sun  was  already 
low  in  the  west,  when  she  paused  on  some  rough  ground  in 
the  shadow  of  the  cypress-trunks,  and  looked  round  for  Bal- 
dassarre.  He  was  not  far  off,  but  Avhen  he  reached  her,  he  was 
glad  to  sink  down  on  an  edge  of  stony  earth.  His  thick- 
set frame  had  no  longer  the  sturdy  vigor  which  belonged 
to  it  when  he  first  appeared  with  the  rope  round  him  in 
the  Duomo  ;  and  under  the  transient  tremor  caused  by  the 
exertion  of  walking  up  the  hill,  his  eyes  seemed  to  have  a 
more  helpless  vagueness. 

"  The  hill  is  steep,"  said  Romola,  with  compassionate  gentle- 
ness, seating  herself  by  him.  "  And  I  fear  you  have  been 
weakened  by  want  ?  " 

He  turned  his  head  and  fixed  his  eyes  on  her  in  silence, 
unable,  now  the  moment  of  speech  was  come,  to  seize  the 
words  that  would  convey  the  thought  he  wanted  to  utter : 
and  she  remained  as  motionless  as  she  could,  lest  he  should 
suppose  her  impatient.  He  looked  like  nothing  higher  than 
a  common-bred,  neglected  old  man  ;  but  she  was  used  now  to 
be  very  near  to  such  people,  and  to  think  a  great  deal  about 
their  troubles.  Gradually  his  glance  gathered  a  more  definite 
expression,  and  at  last  he  said  with  abrupt  emphasis,  — 

"  Ah  !  you  would  have  been  my  daughter !  " 

The  swift  flush  came  in  Romola's  face  and  went  back  again 
as  swiftly,  leaving  her  with  white  lips  a  little  apart,  like  a 
marble  image  of  horror.  For  her  mind,  the  revelation  was 
made.  She  divined  the  facts  that  lay  behind  that  single  word, 
and  in  the  first  moment  there  could  be  no  check  to  the  im- 
pulsive belief  which  sprang  from  her  keen  experience  of 
Tito's  nature.  The  sensitive  response  of  her  face  was  a 
stimulus  to  Baldassarre  ;  for  the  first  time  his  Avords  had 
wrought  their  right  effect.  He  went  on  with  gathering  eager- 
ness and  firmness,  laying  his  hand  on  her  arm. 


408  ROM  OLA. 

"  You  are  a  woman  of  proud  blood  —  is  it  not  true  ?  You 
go  to  hear  the  preacher ;  you  hate  baseness  —  baseness  that 
smiles  and  triumphs.     You  hate  your  husband  ?  " 

"■  Oh,  God  !  were  you  really  his  father  ?  "  said  Romola,  in 
a  low  voice,  too  entirely  possessed  by  the  images  of  the  past 
to  take  any  note  of  Baldassarre's  question.  "  Or  was  it  as 
he  said  ?     Did  you  take  him  when  he  was  little  ?  " 

"Ah,  you  believe  me,  —  you  know  what  he  is!"  said  Bal- 
dassarre,  exultingly,  tightening  the  pressure  on  her  arm,  as  if 
the  contact  gave  him  power.     "  You  will  help  me  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Romola,  not  interpreting  the  words  as  he 
meant  them.  She  laid  her  palm  gently  on  the  rough  hand 
that  grasped  her  arm,  and  the  tears  came  to  her  eyes  as  she 
looked  at  him.  "  Oh,  it  is  piteous  !  Tell  me  —  you  were  a 
great  scholar ;  you  taught  him.     How  is  it  ?  " 

She  broke  off.  Tito's  allegation  of  this  man's  madness  had 
come  across  her ;  and  where  were  the  signs  even  of  past  re- 
finement ?  But  she  had  the  self-command  not  to  move  her 
hand.  She  sat  perfectly  still,  waiting  to  listen  with  new 
caution. 

"It  is  gone!  —  it  is  all  gone!"  said  Baldassarre;  "and  they 
would  not  believe  me,  because  he  lied,  and  said  I  was  mad ; 
and  they  had  me  dragged  to  prison.  And  I  am  old  —  my 
mind  will  not  come  back.     And  the  world  is  against  me." 

He  paused  a  moment,  and  his  eyes  sank  as  if  he  were 
under  a  wave  of  despondency.  Then  he  looked  up  at  her 
again,  and  said  with  renewed  eagerness,  — 

"  But  you  are  not  against  me.  He  made  you  love  him,  and 
he  has  been  false  to  you ;  and  you  hate  him.  Yes,  he  made 
me  love  him  :  he  was  beautiful  and  gentle,  and  I  was  a  lonely 
man.  I  took  him  when  they  were  beating  him.  He  slept  in 
my  bosom  when  he  was  little,  and  I  watched  him  as  he  grew, 
and  gave  him  all  my  knowledge,  and  everything  that  was 
mine  I  meant  to  be  his.  I  had  many  things ;  money,  and 
books,  and  gems.  He  had  my  gems  —  he  sold  them  ;  and  lie 
left  me  in  slavery.  He  never  came  to  seek  me,  and  when  1 
came  back  poor  and  in  misery,  he  denied  me.  He  said  I  was 
a  madman." 

"He  told  us  his  father  was  dead  —  was  drowned,"  said 
Romola,  faintly.  "  Surely  he  must  have  believed  it  then. 
Oh  !  he  could  not  have  been  so  base  then  !  " 

A  vision  had  risen  of  what  Tito  Avas  to  her  in  those  iirst 
days  when  she  thought  no  more  of  wrong  in  him  than  a  child 
thinks  of  poison  in  flowers.     The  yearning  regret  that  lay  iu 


ON  SAN  MINI  A  TO.  409 

that  memory  brought  some  relief  from  the  tension  of  horror. 
With  one  great  sob  the  tears  rushed  forth. 

"Ah,  you  are  young,  and  the  tears  come  easily,"  said 
Baldassarre,  with  some  impatience.  "  But  tears  are  no  good  ; 
they  only  put  out  the  fire  within,  and  it  is  the  fire  that  works. 
Tears  will  hinder  us.     Listen  to  me." 

Romola  turned  towards  him  with  a  slight  start.  Again  the 
possibility  of  his  madness  had  darted  through  her  mind,  and 
checked  the  rush  of  belief.  If,  after  all,  this  man  were  only 
a  mad  assassin  ?  But  her  deep  belief  in  this  story  still  lay 
behind,  and  it  was  more  in  sympathy  than  in  fear  that  she 
avoided  the  risk  of  paining  him  by  any  show  of  doubt. 

"Tell  me,"  she  said,  as  gently  as  she  could,  "how  did  you 
lose  your  memory  —  your  scholarship." 

"I  was  ill.  I  can't  tell  how  long  —  it  was  a  blank.  I  re- 
member nothing,  only  at  last  I  was  sitting  in  the  sun  among 
the  stones,  and  everything  else  was  darkness.  And  slowly, 
and  by  degrees,  I  felt  something  besides  that :  a  longing  for 
something  —  I  did  not  know  what  —  that  never  came.  And 
when  I  was  in  the  ship  on  the  waters  I  began  to  know  what  I 
longed  for :  it  was  for  the  Boy  to  come  back  —  it  was  to  find 
all  my  thoughts  again,  for  I  was  locked  away  outside  them 
all.  And  I  am  outside  now.  I  feel  nothing  but  a  wall  and 
darkness." 

Baldassarre  had  become  dreamy  again,  and  sank  into 
silence,  resting  his  head  between  his  hands ;  and  again 
Romola's  belief  in  him  had  submerged  all  cautioning  doubts. 
The  pity  with  which  she  dwelt  on  his  words  seemed  like  the 
revival  of  an  old  pang.  Had  she  not  daily  seen  how  her 
father  missed  Dino  and  the  future  he  had  dreamed  of  in  that 
son? 

"It  all  came  back  once,"  Baldassarre  went  on  presently. 
"  I  was  master  of  everything.  I  saw  all  the  world  again,  and 
my  gems,  and  my  books ;  and  I  thought  I  had  him  in  my 
power,  and  I  went  to  expose  him  where  —  where  the  lights 
were  and  the  trees ;  and  he  lied  again,  and  said  I  was  mad, 
and  they  dragged  me  away  to  prison.  .  .  .  Wickedness  is 
strong  ;  and  he  wears  armor." 

The  fierceness  had  flamed  up  again.  He  spoke  with  his 
former  intensity,  and  again  he  grasped  Romola's  arm. 

"  But  you  will  help  me  ?  He  has  been  false  to  you  too. 
He  has  another  wife,  and  she  has  children.  He  makes  her 
believe  he  is  her  husband,  and  she  is  a  foolish,  helpless  thing. 
I  will  show  you  where  she  lives." 


410  ROMOLA. 

The  first  shock  that  passed  through  Romola  was  visibly  one 
of  anger.  The  woman's  sense  of  indignity  was  inevitably 
foremost.  Baldassarre  instinctively  felt  her  in  sympathy 
with  him. 

"  You  hate  him,"  he  went  on.  "  Is  it  not  trne  ?  There  is 
no  love  between  you  ;  I  know  that.  I  know  women  can  hate ; 
and  you  have  proud  blood.  You  hate  falseness,  and  you  can 
love  revenge." 

Romola  sat  paralyzed  by  the  shock  of  conflicting  feelings. 
She  was  not  conscious  of  the  grasp  that  was  bruising  her 
tender  arm. 

"You  shall  contrive  it,"  said  Baldassarre,  presently,  in  an 
eager  whisper.  "  I  have  learned  by  heart  that  you  are  his 
rightful  wife.  You  are  a  noble  woman.  You  go  to  hear  the 
preacher  of  vengeance  ;  you  will  help  justice.  But  you  will 
think  for  me.  My  mind  goes  —  everything  goes  sometimes  — 
all  but  the  fire.  The  fire  is  God :  it  is  justice :  it  will  not 
die.  You  believe  that  —  is  it  not  true?  If  they  will  not 
hang  him  for  robbing  me,  you  will  take  away  his  armor  — you 
Avill  make  him  go  without  it,  and  I  will  stab  him.  I  have  a 
knife,  and  my  arm  is  still  strong  enough." 

He  put  his  hand  under  his  tunic,  and  reached  out  the  hid- 
den knife,  feeling  the  edge  abstractedly,  as  if  he  needed  the 
sensation  to  keep  alive  his  ideas. 

It  seemed  to  Romola  as  if  every  fresh  hour  of  her  life 
were  to  become  more  difficult  than  the  last.  Her  judgment 
was  too  vigorous  and  rapid  for  her  to  fall  into  the  mistake  of 
using  futile  deprecatory  words  to  a  man  in  Baldassarre's 
state  of  mind.  She  chose  not  to  answer  his  last  speech.  She 
would  win  time  for  his  excitement  to  allay  itself  by  asking 
something  else  that  she  cared  to  know.  She  spoke  rather 
tremulously,  — 

"You  say  she  is  foolish  and  helpless  —  that  other  wife  — 
and  believes  him  to  be  her  real  husband.  Perhaps  he  is  : 
perhaps  he  married  her  before  he  married  me." 

"  I  cannot  tell,"  said  Baldassarre,  pausing  in  that  action  of 
feeling  the  knife,  and  looking  bewildered.  "  I  can  remember 
no  more.  I  only  know  where  she  lives.  You  shall  see  her. 
T  will  take  you  ;  but  not  now,"  he  added  hurriedly,  "  he  may 
be  there.     The  night  is  coming  on." 

"  It  is  true,"  said  Romola,  starting  up  with  a  sudden  con- 
sciousness that  the  sun  had  set  and  the  hills  were  darkening ; 
"  but  you  will  come  and  take  me  —  when  ?  " 

"  In  the  morning,"  said  Baldassarre,  dreaming  that  she,  too, 
wanted  to  hurry  to  her  vengeance. 


THE  EVENING  AND   THE  MORNING.  411 

"  Come  to  me,  then,  where  you  came  to  me  to-day,  in  the 
church.  I  will  be  there  at  ten  ;  and  if  you  are  not  there,  I 
will  go  again  towards  mid-day.     Can  you  remember  ?  " 

"  Mid-day,"  said  Baldassarre  —  "  only  mid-day.  The  same 
place,  and  raid-day.  And,  after  that,"  he  added,  rising  and 
grasping  her  arm  again  with  his  left  hand,  while  he  held  the 
knife  in  his  right ;  "  we  will  have  our  revenge.  He  shall  feel 
the  sharp  edge  of  justice.  The  world  is  against  me,  but  you 
will  help  me." 

"  I  would  help  you  in  other  ways,"  said  Roraola,  making  a 
first,  timid  effort  to  dispel  his  illusion  about  her.  "  I  fear 
you  are  in  want ;  you  have  to  labor,  and  get  little.  I  should 
like  to  bring  you  comforts,  and  make  you  feel  again  that  there 
is  some  one  who  cares  for  you." 

"  Talk  no  more  about  that,"  said  Baldassarre,  fiercely.  "  I 
will  have  nothing  else.  Help  me  to  wring  one  drop  of  ven- 
geance on  this  side  of  the  grave.  I  have  nothing  but  my 
knife.  It  is  sharp ;  but  there  is  a  moment  after  the  thrust 
when  men  see  the  face  of  death,  —  and  it  shall  be  my  face 
that  he  will  see." 

He  loosed  his  hold,  and  sank  down  again  in  a  sitting 
posture.  Romola  felt  helpless  :  she  must  defer  all  intentions 
till  the  morrow. 

"  Mid-day,  then,"  she  said,  in  a  distinct  voice. 

'*  Yes,"  he  answered,  with  an  air  of  exhaustion.  "  Go ;  I 
will  rest  here." 

She  hastened  away.  Turning  at  the  last  spot  whence  he 
was  likely  to  be  in  sight,  she  saw  him  seated  still. 


CHAPTER   LIV. 

THE  EVENING  AND  THE  MORNING. 

RoMOLA  had  a  purpose  in  her  mind  as  she  was  hastening 
away  ;  a  purpose  which  had  been  growing  through  the  after- 
noon hours  like  a  side-stream,  rising  higher  and  higher  along 
with  the  main  current.  It  was  less  a  resolve  than  a  necessity 
of  her  feeling.  Heedless  of  the  darkening  streets,  and  not 
caring  to  call  for  Maso's  slow  escort,  she  hurried  across  the 
bridge  where  the  river  showed  itself  black  before  the  distant 
dying  red,  and  took  the  most  direct  way  to  the  Old  Palace, 


412  ROMOLA. 

She  might  encounter  her  husband  there.  Ko  matter.  vShe 
could  not  weigh  probabilities ;  she  must  discharge  her  heart. 
She  did  not  know  what  she  passed  in  the  pillared  court  or  up 
the  wide  stairs  ;  she  only  knew  that  she  asked  an  usher  for 
the  Gonfaloniere,  giving  her  name,  and  begging  to  be  shown 
into  a  private  room. 

She  was  not  left  long  alone  with  the  frescoed  figures  and 
the  newly  lit  tapers.  Soon  the  door  opened,  and  Bernardo 
del  Nero  entered,  still  carrying  his  white  head  erect  above  his 
silk  lucco. 

"  Romola,  my  child,  what  is  this  ?  "  he  said  in  a  tone  of 
anxious  surprise  as  he  closed  the  door. 

She  had  uncovered  her  head  and  went  towards  him  without 
speaking.  He  laid  his  hand  on  her  shoulder,  and  held  her  a 
little  way  from  him  that  he  might  see  her  better.  Her  face 
was  haggard  from  fatigue  and  long  agitation,  her  hair  had 
rolled  down  in  disorder ;  but  there  was  an  excitement  in  her 
eyes  that  seemed  to  have  triumphed  over  the  bodily  con- 
sciousness. 

"  What  has  he  done  ?  "  said  Bernardo,  abruptly.  "  Tell  me 
everything,  child  ;  throw  away  pride.     I  am  your  father." 

"  It  is  not  about  myself  —  nothing  about  myself,"  said 
Eomola,  hastily.  "Dearest  godfather,  it  is  about  you.  I 
have  heard  things  —  some  I  cannot  tell  you.  But  you  are  in 
danger  in  the  palace ;  you  are  in  danger  everywhere.  There 
are  fanatical  men  who  would  harm  you,  and  —  and  there  are 
traitors.     Trust  nobody.     If  you  trust,  you  will  be  betrayed." 

Bernardo  smiled. 

"  Have  you  worked  yourself  up  into  this  agitation,  my  poor 
child,"  he  said,  raising  his  hand  to  lier  head  and  patting  it 
gently,  "  to  tell  such  old  truth  as  that  to  an  old  man  like 
me?" 

"  Oh  no,  no  !  they  are  not  old  truths  that  I  mean,"  said 
Romola,  pressing  her  clasped  hands  painfully  together,  as  if 
that  action  would  help  her  to  suppress  what  must  not  be  told. 
"  They  are  fresh  things  that  I  know,  but  cannot  tell.  Dearest 
godfather,  you  know  I  am  not  foolish.  I  would  not  come  to 
you  Avithout  reason.  Is  it  too  late  to  warn  you  against  any 
one,  every  one  who  seems  to  be  working  on  your  side  ?  Is  it 
too  late  to  say,  '  Go  to  your  villa  and  keep  away  in  the  country 
when  these  three  more  days  of  office  are  over'?  Oh,  God: 
])erhaps  it  is  too  late !  and  if  any  harm  comes  to  you,  it  will 
be  as  if  I  had  done  it ! " 

The  last  words  had  burst  from  llomola  iuvoluutarilv  ;    a 


THE  EVENING  AND   THE  MORNING.  413 

long-stifled  feeling  had  found  spasmodic  utterance.  But  she 
herself  was  startled  and  arrested. 

'^'  I  mean,"  she  added,  hesitatingly,  "  I  know  nothing  posi- 
tive.    I  only  know  what  fills  me  with  fears." 

''  Poor  child  !  "  said  Bernardo,  looking  at  her  with  quiet 
penetration  for  a  moment  or  two.  Then  he  said :  '•  Go, 
Romola  —  go  home  and  rest.  These  fears  may  be  only  big 
ugly  shadows  of  something  very  little  and  harmless.  Even 
traitors  must  see  their  interest  in  betraying  ;  the  rats  will  run 
where  they  smell  the  cheese,  and  there  is  no  knowing  yet 
which  way  the  scent  will  come." 

He  paused,  and  turned  away  his  eyes  from  her  with  an  air 
of  abstraction,  till,  with  a  slow  shrug,  he  added,  — 

"  As  for  warnings,  they  are  of  no  use  to  me,  child.  I  enter 
into  no  plots,  but  I  never  forsake  my  colors.  If  I  march 
abreast  with  obstinate  men,  who  will  rush  on  guns  and  pikes, 
I  must  share  the  consequences.  Let  us  say  no  more  about 
that.  I  have  not  many  years  left  at  the  bottom  of  my  sack 
for  them  to  rob  me  of.     Go,  child ;  go  home  and  rest." 

He  put  his  hand  on  her  head  again  caressingly,  and  she  could 
not  help  clinging  to  his  arm,  and  pressing  her  brow  against 
his  shoulder.  Her  godfather's  caress  seemed  the  last  thing 
that  was  left  to  her  out  of  that  young  filial  life,  which  now 
looked  so  happy  to  her  even  in  its  troubles,  for  they  were 
troubles  untainted  by  anything  hateful. 

"  Is  silence  best,  my  Romola  ?  "  said  the  old  man. 

"  Yes,  now ;  but  I  cannot  tell  whether  it  always  will  be," 
she  answered,  hesitatingly,  raising  her  head  with  an  appealing 
look. 

"Well,  you  have  a  father's  ear  while  I  am  above  ground" 
—  he  lifted  the  black  drapery  and  folded  it  round  her  head, 
adding,  —  "and  a  father's  home;  remember  that."  Then 
opening  the  door,  he  said :  "  There,  hasten  away.  You  are 
like  a  black  ghost ;  you  will  be  safe  enough." 

When  Romola  fell  asleep  that  night,  she  slept  deep.  Agi- 
tation had  reached  its  limits  ;  she  must  gather  strength  before 
she  could  suffer  more ;  and,  in  spite  of  rigid  habit,  she  slept 
on  far  beyond  sunrise. 

When  she  awoke,  it  was  to  the  sound  of  guns.  Piero  de' 
Medici,  with  thirteen  hundred  men  at  his  back,  was  before 
the  gate  that  looks  towards  Rome. 

So  much  Romola  learned  from  Maso,  with  many  circum- 
stantial additions  of  dubious  quality.  A  countryman  had 
eome  in  and  alarmed  the  Signoria  before  it  was  light,  else  the 


414  ROMOLA. 

city  would  have  been  taken  by  surprise.  His  master  was  not 
in  the  house,  having  been  summoned  to  the  Palazzo  long  ago. 
She  sent  out  the  old  man  again,  that  he  might  gather  news, 
while  she  went  up  to  the  loggia  from  time  to  time  to  try  and 
discern  any  signs  of  the  dreaded  entrance  having  been  made, 
or  of  its  having  been  effectively  repelled.  Maso  brought  her 
word  that  the  great  Piazza  was  full  of  armed  men,  and  that 
many  of  the  chief  citizens  suspected  as  friends  of  the  Medici 
had  been  summoned  to  the  palace  and  detained  there.  Some 
of  the  people  seemed  not  to  mind  whether  Piero  got  in  or  not, 
and  some  said  the  Signoria  itself  had  invited  him  ;  but  how- 
ever that  might  be,  they  were  giving  him  an  ugly  welcome ; 
and  the  soldiers  from  Pisa  were  coming  against  him. 

In  her  memory  of  those  morning  hours,  there  were  not 
many  things  that  Romola  could  distinguish  as  actual  external 
experiences  standing  markedly  out  above  the  tumultuous 
waves  of  retrospect  and  anticipation.  She  knew  that  she  had 
really  walked  to  the  Badia  by  the  appointed  time  in  spite  of 
■  street  alarms ;  she  knew  that  she  had  waited  there  in  vain. 
And  the  scene  she  had  witnessed  when  she  came  out  of  the 
church,  and  stood  watching  on  the  steps  while  the  doors  were 
being  closed  behind  her  for  the  afternoon  interval,  always 
came  back  to  her  like  a  remembered  waking. 

There  was  a  change  in  the  faces  and  tones  of  the  people, 
armed  and  unarmed,  who  were  pausing  or  hurrying  along  the 
streets.  The  guns  were  firing  again,  but  the  sound  only  pro- 
voked laughter.  She  soon  knew  the  cause  of  the  change. 
Piero  de'  Medici  and  his  horsemen  had  turned  their  backs  on 
Florence,  and  were  galloping  as  fast  as  they  could  along  the 
Siena  road.  She  learned  this  from  a  substantial  shopkeeping 
Piagnone,  who  had  not  yet  laid  down  his  pike. 

"  It  is  true,"  he  ended,  with  a  certain  bitterness  in  his 
emphasis.  "  Piero  is  gone,  but  there  are  those  left  behind 
who  were  in  the  secret  of  his  coming  —  we  all  know  that ; 
and  if  the  new  Signoria  does  its  duty  we  shall  soon  know 
who  they  are." 

The  words  darted  through  Pomola  like  a  sharp  spasm  ;  but 
the  evil  they  foreshadowed  was  not  yet  close  upon  her,  and  as 
she  entered  her  home  again,  her  most  pressing  anxiety  was 
the  possibility  that  she  had  lost  sight  for  a  long  wliile  of 
Baldassarre. 


y 


WAITING.  415 


CHAPTER  LV. 

WAITING. 

The  lengthening  sunny  days  went  on  without  bringing 
either  what  Romola  most  desired  or  what  she  most  dreaded. 
They  brought  no  sign  from  Baldassarre,  and,  in  spite  of  spe- 
cial watch  on  the  part  of  the  Government,  no  revelation  of  the 
suspected  conspiracy.  But  they  brought  other  things  which 
touched  her  closely,  and  bridged  the  phantom-crowded  space 
of  anxiety  with  active  sympathy  in  immediate  trial.  They 
brought  the  spreading  Plague  and  the  Excommunication  of 
Savonarola. 

Both  these  events  tended  to  arrest  her  incipient  alienation 
from  the  Frate,  and  to  rivet  again  her  attachment  to  the  man 
who  had  opened  to  her  the  new  life  of  duty,  and  who  seemed 
now  to  be  worsted  in  the  fight  for  principle  against  profligacy. 
For  Romola  could  not  carry  from  day  to  day  into  the  abodes 
of  pestilence  and  misery  the  sublime  excitement  of  a 
gladness  that,  since  such  anguish  existed,  she  too  existed 
to  make  some  of  the  anguish  less  bitter,  without  remember- 
ing that  she  owed  this  transcendent  moral  life  to  Fra 
Girolamo.  She  could  not  witness  the  silencing  and  excommu- 
nication of  a  man  whose  distinction  from  the  great  mass  of 
the  clergy  lay,  not  in  any  heretical  belief,  not  in  his  supei'sti- 
tions,  but  in  the  energy  with  which  he  sought  to  make  the 
Christian  life  a  reality,  without  feeling  herself  drawn  strongly 
to  his  side. 

Far  on  in  the  hot  days  of  June  the  Excommunication,  for 
some  weeks  arrived  from  Rome,  was  solemnly  published  in  the 
Duomo.  Romola  went  to  witness  the  scene,  that  the  resist- 
ance it  inspired  might  invigorate  that  sympathy  with  Savon- 
arola which  was  one  source  of  her  strength.  It  was  in 
memorable  contrast  with  the  scene  she  had  been  accustomed 
to  witness  there. 

Instead  of  upturned  citizen-faces  filling  the  vast  area  under 
the  morning  light,  the  youngest  rising  amphitheatre-wise 
towards  the  walls,  and  making  a  garland  of  hope  around  the 
memories  of  age  —  instead  of  the  mighty  voice  thrilling  all 


416  ROMOLA. 

hearts  with  the  sense  of  great  things,  visible  and  invisible,  to 
be  struggled  for  —  there  were  the  bare  walls  at  evening  made 
more  sombre  by  the  glimmer  of  tapers  ;  there  was  the  black 
and  gray  Hock  of  monks  and  secular  clergy  with  bent,  unex- 
pectaut  faces ;  tliere  was  the  occasional  tinkling  of  little  bells 
in  the  pauses  of  a  monotonous  voice  reading  a  sentence  which 
had  already  been  long  hanging  up  in  the  churches  ;  and  at  last 
there  was  the  extinction  of  the  tapers,  and  the  slow,  shuffling 
tread  of  monkish  feet  departing  in  the  dim  silence. 

Romola's  ardor  on  the  side  of  the  Frate  was  doubly  strength- 
ened by  the  gleeful  triumph  she  saw  in  hard  and  coarse  faces, 
and  by  the  fear-stricken  confusion  in  the  faces  and  speech  of 
many  among  his  strongly  attached  friends.  The  question  where 
the  duty  of  obedience  ends,  and  the  duty  of  resistance  begins, 
could  in  no  case  be  an  easy  one ;  but  it  was  made  overwhelm- 
ingly difficult  by  the  belief  that  the  Church  was  —  not  a  com- 
promise of  parties  to  secure  a  more  or  less  approximate  justice 
in  the  appropriation  of  funds,  but  —  a  living  organism,  instinct 
with  Divine  power  to  bless  and  to  curse.  To  most  of  the  pious 
Florentines,  who  had  hitherto  felt  no  doubt  in  their  adherence 
to  the  Frate,  that  belief  in  the  Divine  potency  of  the  Church 
was  not  an  embraced  opinion,  it  was  an  inalienable  impres- 
sion, like  the  concavity  of  the  blue  firmament ;  and  the  bold- 
ness of  Savonarola's  written  arguments  that  the  Excommuni- 
cation was  unjust,  and  that,  being  unjust,  it  was  not  valid, 
only  made  them  tremble  the  more,  as  a  defiance  cast  at  a 
mystic  image,  against  whose  subtle  immeasurable  power  there 
was  neither  weapon  nor  defence. 

But  Romola,  whose  mind  had  not  been  allowed  to  draw  its 
early  nourishment  from  the  traditional  associations  of  the 
Christian  community  in  which  her  father  had  lived  a  life 
apart,  felt  her  relation  to  the  Church  only  through  Savonarola; 
his  moral  force  had  been  the  only  authority  to  which  she  had 
bowed ;  and  in  his  excommunication  she  only  saw  the  menace 
of  hostile  vice :  on  one  side  she  saw  a  man  whose  life  was  de- 
voted to  the  ends  of  public  virtue  and  spiritual  purity,  and  on 
the  otlier  the  assault  of  alarmed  selfishness,  headed  by  a  lust- 
ful, greedy,  lying,  and  murderous  old  man,  once  called  Rodrigo 
Borgia,  and  now  lifted  to  the  pinnacle  of  infamy  as  Pope 
Alexander  the  Sixth.  The  finer  shades  of  fact  which  soften 
the  edge  of  such  antitheses  are  not  apt  to  be  seen  except  by 
neutrals,  who  are  not  distressed  to  discern  some  folly  in 
martyrs  and  some  judiciousness  in  the  men  who  burnt  them. 

But  Romola  required  a  strength  that  neutrality  could  not 


WAITING.  417 

give;  and  this  Excommunication,  which  simplified  and  en- 
nobled the  resistant  position  of  Savouarola  by  bringing  into 
prominence  its  wider  relations,  seemed  to  come  to  her  like  a 
rescue  from  the  threatening  isolation  of  criticism  and  doubt. 
The  Frate  was  now  withdrawn  from  that  smaller  antagonism 
against  Florentine  enemies  into  which  he  continually  fell  in 
the  unchecked  excitement  of  the  pulpit,  and  presented  him- 
self simply  as  appealing  to  the  Christian  world  against  a 
vicious  exercise  of  ecclesiastical  power.  He  was  a  standard- 
bearer  leaping  into  the  breach.  Life  never  seems  so  clear  and 
easy  as  when  the  heart  is  beating  faster  at  the  sight  of  some 
generous  self-risking  deed.  We  feel  no  doubt  then  what  is 
the  highest  prize  the  soul  can  win ;  we  almost  believe  in  our 
own  power  to  attain  it.  By  a  new  current  of  such  enthusi- 
asm Romola  was  helloed  through  these  difficult  summer  days. 
She  had  ventured  on  no  Avords  to  Tito  that  would  apprise  him 
of  her  late  interview  with  Baldassarre,  and  the  revelation  he 
had  made  to  her.  What  would  such  agitating,  difficult  words 
win  from  him  ?  No  admission  of  the  truth  ;  nothing,  proba- 
bly, but  a  cool  sarcasm  about  her  sympathy  with  his  assassin. 
Baldassarre  was  evidently  helpless :  the  thing  to  be  feared 
was,  not  that  he  should  injure  Tito,  but  that  Tito,  coming 
upon  his  traces,  should  carry  out  some  new  scheme  for  ridding 
himself  of  the  injured  man  who  was  a  haunting  dread  to  him. 
Romola  felt  that  she  could  do  nothing  decisive  until  she  had 
seen  Baldassarre  again,  and  learned  the  full  truth  about  that 
"  other  wife  "  —  learned  whether  she  were  the  wife  to  whom 
Tito  was  first  bound. 

The  possibilities  about  that  other  wife,  which  involved  the 
worst  wound  to  her  hereditary  pride,  mingled  themselves  as  a 
newly  embittering  suspicion  with  the  earliest  memories  of  her 
illusory  love,  eating  away  the  lingering  associations  of  ten- 
derness with  the  past  image  of  her  husband  ;  and  her  irresist- 
ible belief  in  the  rest  of  Baldassarre's  revelation  made  her 
shrink  from  Tito  with  a  horror  which  would  perhaps  have 
urged  some  passionate  speech  in  spite  of  herself  if  he  had 
not  been  more  than  usually  absent  from  home.  Like  many 
of  the  wealthier  citizens  in  that  time  of  pestilence,  he  spent 
the  intervals  of  business  chiefly  in  the  country  :  the  agreeable 
Melema  was  welcome  at  many  villas,  and  since  Romola  had 
refused  to  leave  the  city,  he  had  no  need  to  provide  a  country 
residence  of  his  own. 

But  at  last,  in  the  later  days  of  July,  the  alleviation  of 
those  public  troubles  which  had  absorbed   her  activity  and 


418  ttOMOLA. 

much  of  her  thought,  left  Romola  to  a  less  counteracted  sense 
of  her  personal  lot.  The  Plague  had  almost  disappeared,  and 
the  position  of  Savonarola  was  made  more  hopeful  by  a  favor- 
able magistracy,  who  were  writing  urgent  vindicatory  letters 
to  Rome  on  his  behalf,  entreating  the  withdrawal  of  the  Ex- 
communication. 

Romola's  healthy  and  vigorous  frame  was  undergoing  the 
re-action  of  languor  inevitable  after  continuous  excitement  and 
over-exertion ;  but  her  mental  restlessness  would  not  allow 
her  to  remain  at  home  without  peremptory  occupation,  except 
during  the  sultry  hours.  In  the  cool  of  the  morning  and  even- 
ing she  walked  out  constantly,  varying  her  direction  as  much 
as  possible,  with  the  vague  hope  that  if  Baldassarre  were  still 
alive  she  might  encounter  him.  Perhaps  some  illness  had 
brought  a  new  paralysis  of  memory,  and  he  had  forgotten 
where  she  lived  —  forgotten  even  her  existence.  That  was 
her  most  sanguine  explanation  of  his  non-appearance.  The 
explanation  she  felt  to  be  most  probable  was,  that  he  had  died 
of  the  Plague. 


CHAPTER   LVI. 

THE    OTHER    WIFE. 

The  morning  warmth  was  already  beginning  to  be  rather 
oppressive  to  Romola,  when,  after  a  walk  along  by  the  walls 
on  her  way  from  San  Marco,  she  turned  towards  the  intersect- 
ing streets  again  at  the  gate  of  Santa  Croce. 

The  Borgo  La  Croce  was  so  still,  that  she  listened  to  her 
own  footsteps  on  the  pavement  in  the  sunny  silence,  until,  on 
approaching  a  bend  in  the  street,  she  saw,  a  few  yards  before 
her,  a  little  child  not  more  than  three  years  old,  with  no  other 
clothing  than  his  white  shirt,  pause  from  a  waddling  run  and 
look  around  him.  In  the  first  moment  of  coming  nearer  she 
could  only  see  his  back  —  a  boy's  back,  square  and  sturdy,  with 
a  cloud  of  reddish  brown  curls  above  it ;  but  in  the  next  he 
turned  towards  her,  and  she  could  see  his  dark  eyes  wide  with 
tears,  and  his  lower  lip  pushed  up  and  trembling,  while  his 
fat  brown  fists  clutched  his  shirt  helplessly.  The  glimpse  of 
a  tall  black  figure  sending  a  shadow  over  him  brought  his  be- 
wildered fear  to  a  climax,  and  a  loud  crying  sob  sent  the  big 
tears  rolling. 


THE  OTHER    WIFE.  410 

Romola,  with  the  ready  maternal  instinct  which  was  one 
hidden  source  of  her  passionate  tenderness,  instantly  uncov- 
ered her  head,  and,  stooping  down  on  the  pavement,  put  her 
arms  round  him,  and  her  cheeks  against  his,  while  she  spoke 
to  him  in  caressing  tones.  At  first  his  sobs  were  only  the 
louder,  but  he  made  no  effort  to  get  away,  and  presently  the 
outburst  ceased  with  that  strange  abruptness  which  belongs  to 
childish  joys  and  griefs  :  his  face  lost  its  distortion,  and  was 
fixed  in  an  open-mouthed  gaze  at  Eomola. 

"  You  have  lost  yourself,  little  one,"  she  said,  kissing  him. 
"  Never  mind  !  we  will  find  the  house  again.  Perhaps  mamma 
will  meet  us." 

She  divined  that  he  had  made  his  escape  at  a  moment  when 
the  mother's  eyes  were  turned  away  from  him,  and  thought  it 
likely  that  he  would  soon  be  followed. 

"  Oh,  what  a  heavy,  heavy  boy  ! "  she  said,  trying  to  lift 
him.  ''I  cannot  carry  you.  Come,  then,  you  must  toddle 
back  by  my  side." 

The  parted  lips  remained  motionless  in  awed  silence,  and 
one  brown  fist  still  clutched  the  shirt  with  as  much  tenacity 
as  ever ;  but  the  other  yielded  itself  quite  willingly  to  the 
wonderful  white  hand,  strong  but  soft. 

"  You  have  a  mamma  ?  "  said  Romola,  as  they  set  out,  look- 
ing down  at  the  boy  with  a  certain  yearning.  But  he  was 
mute.  A  girl  under  those  circumstances  might  perhaps  have 
chirped  abundantly  ;  not  so  this  square-shouldered  little  man 
with  the  big  cloud  of  curls. 

He  was  awake  to  the  first  sign  of  his  whereabout,  however. 
At  the  turning  by  the  front  of  San  Ambrogio  he  dragged  Ro- 
mola towards  it,  looking  up  at  her. 

"  Ah,  that  is  the  way  home,  is  it  ?  "  she  said,  smiling  at 
him.  He  only  thrust  his  head  forward  and  pulled,  as  an 
admonition  that  they  should  go  faster. 

There  was  still  another  turning  that  he  had  a  decided 
opinion  about,  and  then  Eomola  found  herself  in  a  short  street 
leading  to  open  garden  ground.  It  was  in  front  of  a  house  at 
the  end  of  this  street  that  the  little  fellow  paused,  pulling 
her  towards  some  stone  stairs.  He  had  evidently  no  wish  for 
her  to  loose  his  hand,  and  she  would  not  have  been  willing  to 
leave  him  without  being  sure  that  she  was  delivering  him  to 
his  friends.  They  mounted  the  stairs,  seeing  but  dimly  in 
that  sudden  withdrawal  from  the  sunlight,  till,  at  the  iinal 
landing-place,  an  extra  stream  of  light  came  from  an  open 
doorway.     Passing  through  a  small  lobby,  they  came  to  au- 


420  nOMOLA. 

other  open  door,  and  there  Eomola  paused.  Her  approach 
had  not  been  heard. 

On  a  low  chair  at  the  farther  end  of  the  room  opposite  the 
light,  sat  Tessa,  with  one  hand  on  the  edge  of  the  cradle, 
and  her  head  hanging  a  little  on  one  side,  fast  asleep.  Near 
one  of  the  windows,  with  her  back  turned  towards  the  door, 
sat  Monna  Lisa  at  her  work  of  preparing  salad,  in  deaf  un- 
consciousness. There  was  only  an  instant  for  Romola's  eyes 
to  take  in  that  still  scene ;  for  Lillo  snatched  his  hand  away 
from  her  and  ran  up  to  his  mother's  side,  not  making  any 
direct  effort  to  wake  her,  but  only  leaning  his  head  back 
against  her  arm,  and  surveying  Romola  seriously  from  that 
distance. 

As  Lillo  pushed  against  her,  Tessa  opened  her  eyes,  and 
looked  up  in  bewilderment ;  but  her  glance  had  no  sooner 
rested  on  the  figure  at  the  opposite  doorway  than  she  started 
up,  blushed  deeply,  and  began  to  tremble  a  little,  neither 
speaking  nor  moving  forward. 

"  Ah !  we  have  seen  each  other  before,"  said  Eomola,  smil- 
ing, and  coming  forward.  "  I  am  glad  it  was  your  little  boy. 
He  was  crying  in  the  street ;  I  suppose  he  had  run  away.  So 
we  walked  together  a  little  way,  and  then  he  knew  where  he 
was,  and  brought  me  here.  But  you  had  not  missed  him  ? 
That  is  well,  else  you  would  have  been  frightened." 

The  shock  of  finding  that  Lillo  had  run  away  overcame 
every  other  feeling  in  Tessa  for  the  moment.  Her  color  went 
again,  and,  seizing  Lillo's  arm,  she  ran  with  him  to  Monna 
Lisa,  saying,  with  a  half  sob,  loud  in  the  old  woman's  ear, — 

"  Oh,  Lisa,  you  are  wicked  !  Why  will  you  stand  with  your 
back  to  the  door  ?     Lillo  ran  away  ever  so  far  into  the  street." 

"  Holy  Mother  !  "  said  Monna  Lisa,  in  her  meek,  thick  tone, 
letting  the  spoon  fall  from  her  hands.  "Where  were  you, 
then  ?     I  thought  you  were  there,  and  had  your  eye  on  him." 

"But  you  knoiv  I  go  to  sleep  when  I  am  rocking,"  said 
Tessa,  in  pettish  remonstrance. 

"  Well,  well,  we  must  keep  the  outer  door  shut,  or  else  tie 
him  up,"  said  Monna  Lisa,  "  for  he'll  be  as  cunning  as  Satan 
before  long,  and  that's  the  holy  truth.  But  how  came  he  back, 
then  ?  " 

This  question  recalled  Tessa  to  the  consciousness  of  Ro- 
mola's  presence.  Without  answering,  she  turned  towards  her, 
blushing  and  timid  again,  and  Monna  Lisa's  eyes  followed  her 
movement.     The  old  woman  made  a  low  reverence,  and  said,  — 

'•  Doubtlebb  the  most  noble  lady  brought  him  back."     Then, 


THE   OTHER    WIFE.  421 

advancing  a  little  nearer  to  Romola,  she  added,  "It's  my 
shame  for  him  to  have  been  found  with  only  his  shirt  on ;  but 
he  kicked,  and  wouldn't  have  his  other  clothes  on  this  morn- 
ing, and  the  mother,  poor  thing,  will  never  hear  of  his  being 
beaten.  But  what's  an  old  woman  to  do  without  a  stick  when 
the  lad's  legs  get  so  strong  ?  Let  your  nobleness  look  at  his 
legs." 

Lillo,  conscious  that  his  legs  were  in  question,  pulled  his 
shirt  up  a  little  higher,  and  looked  down  at  their  olive  round- 
ness with  a  dispassionate  and  curious  air.  Romola  laughed, 
and  stooped  to  give  him  a  caressing  shake  and  a  kiss,  and  this 
action  helped  the  re-assurance  that  Tessa  had  already  gathered 
from  Monna  Lisa's  address  to  Romola.  For  when  Naldo  had 
been  told  about  the  adventure  at  the  Carnival,  and  Tessa  had 
asked  him  who  the  heavenly  lady  that  had  come  just  when 
she  was  wanted,  and  had  vanished  so  soon,  was  likely  to  be 
—  whether  she  could  be  the  Holy  Madonna  herself  ?  —  he  had 
answered,  '•  ISTot  exactly,  my  Tessa  ;  only  one  of  the  saints," 
and  had  not  chosen  to  say  more.  So  that  in  the  dream-like  com- 
bination of  small  experience  which  made  up  Tessa's  thought, 
Romola  had  remained  confusedly  associated  with  the  pictures 
in  the  churches,  and  when  she  re-appeared,  the  grateful  remem- 
brance of  her  protection  was  slightly  tinctured  with  religious 
awe  —  not  deeply,  for  Tessa's  dread  was  chiefly  of  ugly  and 
evil  beings.  It  seemed  unlikely  that  good  beings  would  be 
angry  and  punish  her,  as  it  was  the  nature  of  Nofri  and  the 
devil  to  do.  And  now  that  Monna  Lisa  had  spoken  freely 
about  Lillo's  legs  and  Romola  had  laughed,  Tessa  was  more  at 
her  ease. 

"Ninna's  in  the  cradle,"  she  said.     "She's  pretty,  too." 

Romola  went  to  look  at  the  sleeping  Ninna,  and  Monna  Lisa, 
one  of  the  exceptionally  meek  deaf,  who  never  expect  to  be 
spoken  to,  returned  to  her  salad. 

"  Ah  !  she  is  waking  :  she  has  opened  her  blue  eyes,"  said 
Romola.  "  You  must  take  her  up,  and  I  will  sit  down  in  this 
chair  —  may  I  ?  —  and  nurse  Lillo.     Come,  Lillo  ! " 

She  sat  down  in  Tito's  chair,  and  put  out  her  arms  towards 
the  lad,  whose  eyes  had  followed  her.  He  hesitated :  and, 
pointing  his  small  fingers  at  her  with  a  half-puzzled,  half-angry 
feeling,  said,  "  That's  Babbo's  chair,"  not  seeing  his  way  out 
of  the  difficulty  if  Babbo  came  and  found  Romola  in  his 
place. 

"  But  Babbo  is  not  here,  and  I  shall  go  soon.  Come,  let  me 
nurse  you  as  he  does,"  said  Romola,  wondering  to  herself  for 


422  ROMOLA. 

the  first  time  -what  sort  of  Babbo  he  was  whose  wife  was 
dressed  in  contadina  fashion,  but  had  a  certain  daintiness  about 
her  person  that  indicated  idleness  and  plenty.  Lillo  consented 
to  be  lifted  up,  and,  linding  the  lap  exceedingly  comfortable, 
began  to  explore  her  dress  and  hands,  to  see  if  there  were  any 
ornaments  beside  the  rosary. 

Tessa,  who  had  hitherto  been  occupied  in  coaxing  Ninna 
out  of  her  waking  peevishness,  now  sat  down  in  her  low  chair, 
near  Roraola's  knee,  arranging  Ninna's  tiny  person  to  advan- 
tage, jealous  that  the  strange  lady  too  seemed  to  notice  the 
boy  most,  as  Naldo  did. 

"  Lillo  was  going  to  be  angry  with  me,  because  I  sat  in 
Babbo's  chair,"  said  Romola,  as  she  bent  forward  to  kiss 
Ninna's  little  foot.     "  Will  he  come  soon  and  want  it  ?  " 

"  Ah,  no  !  "  said  Tessa,  "  you  can  sit  in  it  a  long  while.  I 
shall  be  sorry  when  you  go.  When  you  first  came  to  take 
care  of  me  at  the  Carnival,  I  thought  it  was  wonderful ;  you 
came  and  went  away  again  so  fast.  And  ISTaldo  said,  perhaps 
you  were  a  saint,  and  that  made  me  tremble  a  little,  though 
the  saints  are  very  good,  I  know  ;  and  you  were  good  to  me, 
and  now  you  have  taken  care  of  Lillo.  Perhaps  you  will 
always  come  and  take  care  of  me.  That  was  how  ISTaldo  did 
a  long  while  ago ;  he  came  and  took  care  of  me  when  I  was 
frightened,  one  San  Giovanni.  I  couldn't  think  where  he 
came  from  —  he  was  so  beautiful  and  good.  And  so  are  you," 
ended  Tessa,  looking  up  at  Romola  with  devout  admiration. 

"  Kaldo  is  your  husband.  His  eyes  are  like  Lillo's,"  said 
Romola,  looking  at  the  boy's  darkly  pencilled  eyebrows,  un- 
usual at  his  age.  She  did  not  speak  interrogatively,  but  with 
a  quiet  certainty  of  inference  which  was  necessarily  mysterious 
to  Tessa. 

"  Ah  !  you  know  him  !  "  she  said,  pausing  a  little  in  wonder. 
"  Perhaps  you  know  Kof ri  and  Peretola,  and  our  house  on  the 
hill,  and  everything.  Yes,  like  Lillo's ;  but  not  his  hair. 
His  hair  is  dark  and  long "  —  she  went  on,  getting  rather 
excited.     "  Ah  !  if  jon  know  it,  ecco  ! " 

She  had  put  her  hand  to  a  thin  red  silk  cord  that  hung 
round  her  neck,  and  drew  from  her  bosom  the  tiny  old  parch- 
ment Breve,  the  horn  of  red  coral,  and  a  long  dark  curl  care- 
fully tied  at  one  end  and  suspended  with  those  mystic  treas- 
ures. She  held  them  towards  Romola,  away  from  Ninna's 
snatching  hand. 

"It  is  a  fresh  one.  T  cut  it  lately.  See  how  bright  it  is  !  '' 
she  said,  laying  it  against  the  white  background  of  llomola's 


THE    OTHEn    WIFE.  423 

fingers.  "  They  get  dim,  and  then  he  lets  me  cut  another 
when  his  hair  is  grown ;  and  I  put  it  with  the  Breve,  because 
sometimes  he  is  away  a  long  while,  and  then  I  think  it  helps 
to  take  care  of  me." 

A  slight  shiver  passed  through  Romola  as  the  curl  was  laid 
across  her  fingers.  At  Tessa's  first  mention  of  her  husband 
as  having  come  mysteriously  she  knew  not  whence,  a  possi- 
bility had  risen  before  Romola  that  made  her  heart  beat 
faster ;  for  to  one  who  is  anxiously  in  search  of  a  certain 
object  the  faintest  suggestions  have  a  peculiar  significance. 
And  when  the  curl  was  held  towards  her,  it  seemed  for  an 
instant  like  a  mocking  phantasm  of  the  lock  she  herself  had 
cut  to  wind  with  one  of  her  own  five  years  ago.  But  she  pre- 
served her  outward  calmness,  bent  not  only  on  knowing  the 
truth,  but  also  on  coming  to  that  knowledge  in  a  way  that 
would  not  pain  this  poor,  trusting,  ignorant  thing,  with  the 
child's  mind  in  the  woman's  body.  "  Foolish  and  helpless  :  " 
yes ;  so  far  she  corresponded  to  Baldassarre's  account. 

"  It  is  a  beautiful  curl,"  she  said,  resisting  the  impulse  to 
withdraw  her  hand.  "  Lillo's  curls  will  be  like  it,  perhaps, 
for  his  cheek,  too,  is  dark.  And  you  never  know  where  your 
husband  goes  to  when  he  leaves  you  ?  " 

"No,"  said  Tessa,  putting  back  her  treasures  out  of  the 
children's  way.  "  But  I  know  Messer  San  Michele  takes  care 
of  him,  for  he  gave  him  a  beautiful  coat,  all  made  of  little 
chains ;  and  if  he  puts  that  on,  nobody  can  kill  him.  And 
perhaps,  if" —  Tessa  hesitated  a  little,  under  a  recurrence  of 
that  original  dreamy  wonder  about  Eomola  which  had  been 
expelled  by  chatting  contact  — "  if  you  xoere  a  saint,  you 
would  take  care  of  him,  too,  because  you  have  taken  care  of 
me  and  Lillo." 

An  agitated  flush  came  over  Romola's  face  in  the  first 
moment  of  certaintj^,  but  she  had  bent  her  cheek  against 
Lillo's  head.  The  feeling  that  leaped  out  in  that  flush  was 
something  like  exultation  at  the  thought  that  the  wife's  bur- 
den might  be  about  to  slip  from  her  overladen  shoulders  ; 
that  this  little  ignorant  creature  might  prove  to  be  Tito's  law- 
ful wife.  A  strange  exultation  for  a  proud  and  high-born 
woman  to  have  been  brought  to !  But  it  seemed  to  Eomola 
as  if  that  were  the  only  issue  that  would  make  duty  anything 
else  for  her  than  an  insoluble  problem.  Yet  she  was  not  deaf 
to  Tessa's  last  appealing  words  ;  she  raised  her  head,  and  said, 
in  her  clearest  tones,  — 

"  I  will  always  take  care  of  you  if  I  see  you  need  me.     But 


424  ROMOLA. 

that  beautiful  coat  ?  your  husband  did  not  wear  it  when  you 
were  first  married  ?  Perhaps  he  used  not  to  be  so  long  away 
from  you  then  ?  " 

''  Ah,  yes  !  he  was.  Much  —  much  longer.  So  long,  I 
thought  he  would  never  come  back.  I  used  to  cry.  Oh,  me  ! 
I  was  beaten  then  ;  a  long,  long  while  ago  at  Peretola,  where 
we  had  the  goats  and  mules." 

"  And  how  long  had  you  been  married  before  your  husband 
had  that  chain-coat  ?  "  said  Romola,  her  heart  beating  faster 
and  faster. 

Tessa  looked  meditative,  and  began  to  count  on  her  fingers, 
and  Romola  watched  the  fingers  as  if  they  would  tell  the 
secret  of  her  destiny. 

"  The  chestnuts  were  ripe  when  we  were  married,"  said 
Tessa,  marking  off  her  thumb  and  fingers  again  as  she  spoke  ; 
"  and  then  again  they  were  ripe  at  Peretola  before  he  came 
back,  and  then  again,  after  that,  on  the  hill.  And  soon  the 
soldiers  came,  and  we  heard  the  trumpets,  and  then  Naldo 
had  the  coat." 

"  You  had  been  married  more  than  two  years.  In  which 
church  were  you  married  ? "  said  Romola,  too  entirely 
absorbed  by  one  thought  to  put  any  question  that  was  less 
direct.  Perhaps  before  the  next  morning  she  might  go  to  her 
godfather  and  say  that  she  was  not  Tito  Melema's  lawful  wife 
—  that  the  vows  which  had  bound  her  to  strive  after  an 
impossible  union  had  been  made  void  beforehand. 

Tessa  gave  a  slight  start  at  Romola's  new  tone  of  inquiry, 
and  looked  up  at  her  with  a  hesitating  expression.  Hitherto 
she  had  prattled  on  without  consciousness  that  she  was  making 
revelations,  any  more  than  when  she  said  old  things  over  and 
over  again  to  Monna  Lisa. 

"  Naldo  said  I  was  never  to  tell  about  that,"  she  said 
doubtfully.  "  Do  you  think  he  would  not  be  angry  if  I  told 
you  ?  " 

"It  is  right  that  you  should  tell  me.  Tell  me  everything," 
said  Romola,  looking  at  her  with  mild  authority. 

If  the  impression  from  Naldo's  command  had  been  much 
more  recent  than  it  was,  the  constraining  effect  of  Romola's 
mysterious  authority  would  have  overcome  it.  But  the  sense 
that  she  was  telling  what  she  had  never  told  before  made  her 
begin  with  a  lowered  voice. 

"  It  was  not  in  a  church  —  it  was  at  the  Nativita,  when 
there  was  a  fair,  and  all  the  people  went  overnight  to  see  the 
Madonna  in  the  Nunziata,  and  my  mother  was  ill  and  couldn't 


THE  OTHER    WIFE.  425 

go,  and  I  took  the  bunch  of  cocoons  for  her ;  and  then  he 
came  to  me  in  the  church  and  I  heard  him  say,  '  Tessa ! '  1 
knew  him  because  he  had  taken  care  of  me  at  the  San  Gio- 
vanni, and  then  we  went  into  the  piazza  where  the  fair  was, 
and  I  had  some  berUngozzi,  for  I  was  hungry  and  he  was  very 
good  to  me ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  piazza  there  was  a  holy 
father,  and  an  altar  like  what  they  have  at  the  processions 
outside  the  churches.  So  he  married  us,  and  then  ISTaldo  took 
me  back  into  the  church  and  left  me  ;  and  I  went  home,  and 
my  mother  died,  and  ISTofri  began  to  beat  me  more,  and  Naldo 
never  came  back.  And  I  used  to  cry,  and  once  at  the  Carnival 
I  saw  him  and  followed  him,  and  he  was  angry,  and  said  he 
would  come  some  time,  I  must  wait.  So  I  went  and  waited ; 
but,  oh  !  it  was  a  long  while  before  he  came ;  but  he  would 
have  come  if  he  could,  for  he  was  good ;  and  then  he  took  me 
away,  because  I  cried  and  said  I  could  not  bear  to  stay  with 
Nofri.  And,  oh !  I  was  so  glad,  and  since  then  I  have  been 
always  happy,  for  I  don't  mind  about  the  goats  and  mules, 
because  I  have  Lillo  and  Ninna  now ;  and  Kaldo  is  never 
angry,  only  I  think  he  doesn't  love  Ninna  so  well  as  Lillo, 
and  she  is  pretty." 

Quite  forgetting  that  she  had  thought  her  speech  rather 
momentous  at  the  beginning,  Tessa  fell  to  devouring  Ninna 
with  kisses,  while  Romola  sat  in  silence  with  absent  eyes. 
It  was  inevitable  that  in  this  moment  she  should  think  of  the 
three  beings  before  her  chiefly  in  their  relation  to  her  own 
lot,  and  she  was  feeling  the  chill  of  disappointment  that  her 
difficulties  were  not  to  be  solved  by  external  law.  She  had 
relaxed  her  hold  of  Lillo,  and  was  leaning  her  cheek  against 
her  hand,  seeing  nothing  of  the  scene  around  her.  Lillo  was 
quick  in  perceiving  a  change  that  was  not  agreeable  to  him  ; 
he  had  not  yet  made  any  return  to  her  caresses,  but  he 
objected  to  their  withdrawal,  and  putting  up  both  his  brown 
arms  to  pull  her  head  towards  him,  he  said,  "  Play  with  me 
again !  " 

Romola,  roused  from  her  self-absorption,  clasped  the  lad 
anew,  and  looked  from  him  to  Tessa,  who  had  noAv  paused 
from  her  shower  of  kisses,  and  seemed  to  have  returned  to 
the  more  placid  delight  of  contemplating  the  heavenly  lady's 
face.  That  face  was  undergoing  a  subtle  change,  like  the 
gradual  oncoming  of  a  warmer,  softer  light.  Presently 
Eomola  took  her  scissors  from  her  scarsella,  and  cut  off  one 
of  her  long  wavy  locks,  while  the  three  pairs  of  wide  eyes 
followed  her  movements  with  kitten-like  observation. 


426  ROMOLA. 

"I  must  go  away  from  you  now,"  she  said,  "but  I  will 
leave  this  lock  of  hair  that  it  may  remind  you  of  me,  because 
if  you  are  ever  in  trouble  you  can  think  that  perhaps  God 
will  send  me  to  take  care  of  you  again.  I  cannot  tell  you 
where  to  find  me,  but  if  I  ever  know  that  you  want  me,  I  will 
come  to  you.     Addio  ! " 

She  had  set  down  Lillo  hurriedly,  and  held  out  her  hand  to 
Tessa,  who  kissed  it  with  a  mixture  of  awe  and  sorrow  at 
this  parting.  Romola's  mind  was  oppressed  with  thoughts  ; 
she  needed  to  be  alone  as  soon  as  possible,  but  with  her 
habitual  care  for  the  least  fortunate,  she  turned  aside  to  put 
her  hand  in  a  friendly  way  on  Monna  Lisa's  shoulder  and 
make  her  a  farewell  sign.  Before  the  old  woman  had  finished 
her  deep  reverence,  Romola  had  disappeared. 

Monna  Lisa  and  Tessa  moved  towards  each  other  by  simul- 
taneous impulses,  while  the  two  children  stood  clinging  to 
their  mother's  skirts  as  if  they,  too,  felt  the  atmosphere  of 
awe. 

"  Do  you  think  she  was  a  saint  ?  "  said  Tessa,  in  Lisa's  ear, 
showing  her  the  lock. 

Lisa  rejected  that  notion  very  decidedly  by  a  backward 
movement  of  her  fingers,  and  then  stroking  the  rippled  gold, 
said,  — 

"  She's  a  great  and  noble   lady.     I  saw  such  in  my  youth." 

Eomola  went  home  and  sat  alone  through  the  sultry  hours 
of  that  day  with  the  heavy  certaint}-  that  her  lot  was 
unchanged.  She  was  thrown  back  again  on  the  conflict 
between  the  demands  of  an  outward  law,  which  she  recognized 
as  a  widely  ramifying  obligation,  and  the  demands  of  inner 
moral  facts  which  were  becoming  more  and  more  peremptor3\ 
She  had  drunk  in  deeply  the  spirit  of  that  teaching  by  which 
Savonarola  had  urged  her  to  return  to  her  place.  She  felt 
-^  that  the  sanctity  attached  to  all  close  relations,  and,  therefore, 
pre-eminently  to  the  closest,  was  but  the  expression  in  out- 
ward law  of  that  result  towards  which  all  human  goodness 
and  nobleness  must  spontaneously  tend ;  that  the  light  aban- 
donment of  ties,  whether  inherited  or  voluntary,  because  they 
had  ceased  to  be  pleasant,  was  the  uprooting  of  social  and 
personal  virtue.  What  else  had  Tito's  crime  towards  Baldas- 
sarre  been  but  that  abandonment  working  itself  out  to  the 
most  hideous  extreme  of  falsity  and  ingratitude  ? 

And  the  inspiring  consciousness  breathed  into  her  by 
Savonarola's  influence  that  her  lot  was  vitally  united  with 
the  general  lot  had  exalted  even  the  minor  details  of  obliga- 


THE   OTHER    WIFE.  427 

tion  into  religion.  She  was  marching  with  a  great  armj-  ,  she 
was  feeling  the  stress  of  a  common  life.  Jf  victims  were 
needed,  and  it  was  uncertain  on  whom  the  lot  might  fall,  she 
would  stand  ready  to  answer  to  her  name.  She  had  stood 
long;  she  had  striven  hard  to  fulfil  the  bond,  but  she  had 
seen  all  the  conditions  which  made  the  fulfilment  possible 
gradually  forsaking  her.  The  one  effect  of  her  marriage-tie 
seemed  to  be  the  stifling  predominance  over  her  of  a  nature 
that  she  despised.  All  her  efforts  at  union  had  only  made 
its  impossibility  more  palpable,  and  the  relation  had  become 
for  her  simply  a  degrading  servitude.  The  law  was  sacred. 
Yes,  but  rebellion  might  be  sacred  too.  It  flashed  upon  her 
mind  that  the  problem  before  her  was  essentially  the  same  as 
that  which  had  lain  before  Savonarola  —  the  problem  where 
the  sacredness  of  obedience  ended,  and  where  the  sacredness 
of  rebellion  began.  To  her,  as  to  him,  there  had  come  one  of 
those  moments  in  life  when  the  soul  must  dare  to  act  on  its 
own  warrant,  not  only  without  external  law  to  appeal  to,  but 
in  the  face  of  a  law  which  is  not  unarmed  with  Divine  light- 
nings —  lightnings  that  may  yet  fall  if  the  warrant  has  been 
false. 

Before  the  sun  had  gone  down  she  had  adopted  a  resolve. 
She  would  ask  no  counsel  of  her  godfather  or  of  Savonarola 
until  she  had  made  one  determined  effort  to  speak  freely  with 
Tito,  and  obtain  his  consent  that  she  should  live  apart  from 
him.  She  desired  not  to  leave  him  clandestinely  again,  or  to 
forsake  Florence.  She  would  tell  him  that  if  he  ever  felt  a 
real  need  of  her,  she  would  come  back  to  him.  Was  not  that 
the  utmost  faithfulness  to  her  bond  that  could  be  required  of 
her  ?  A  shuddering  anticipation  came  over  her  that  he  would 
clothe  a  refusal  in  a  sneering  suggestion  that  she  should  enter 
a  convent  as  the  only  mode  of  quitting  him  that  would  not  be 
scandalous.  He  knew  well  that  her  mind  revolted  from  that 
means  of  escape,  not  only  because  of  her  own  repugnance  to 
a  narrow  rule,  but  because  all  the  cherished  memories  of  her 
father  forbade  that  she  should  adopt  a  mode  of  life  which 
was  associated  with  his  deepest  griefs  and  his  bitterest  dis- 
like. 

Tito  had  announced  his  intention  of  coming  home  this 
evening.  She  would  wait  for  him,  and  say  what  she  had  to 
say  at  once,  for  it  was  difficult  to  get  his  ear  during  the  day. 
If  he  had  the  slightest  suspicion  that  personal  words  were 
coming,  he  slipped  away  with  an  appearance  of  unpremedi- 
tated ease.     When  she  sent  for  Maso  to  tell  him  that  she 


428  ROMOLA. 

would  wait  for  his  master,  she  observed  that  the  old  man 
looked  at  her  and  lingered  with  a  mixture  of  hesitation  and 
wondering  anxiety ;  but  finding  that  she  asked  him  no  ques- 
tion, he  slowly  turned  away.  Why  should  she  ask  questions  ? 
Perhaps  Maso  only  knew  or  guessed  something  of  what  she 
knew  already. 

It  was  late  before  Tito  came.  Romola  had  been  pacing  up 
and  down  the  long  room  which  had  once  been  the  library, 
with  the  windows  open,  and  a  loose  white  linen  robe  on 
instead  of  her  usual  black  garment.  She  was  glad  of  that 
change  after  the  long  hours  of  heat  and  motionless  meditation ; 
but  the  coolness  and  exercise  made  her  more  intensely  wake- 
ful, and  as  she  went  with  the  lamp  in  her  hand  to  open  the 
door  for  Tito,  he  might  well  have  been  startled  by  the  vivid- 
ness of  her  eyes  and  the  expression  of  painful  resolution, 
which  was  in  contrast  with  her  usual  self-restrained  quiescence 
before  him.  But  it  seemed  that  this  excitement  was  just 
what  he  expected. 

"  Ah  !  it  is  you,  Romola.  Maso  is  gone  to  bed,"  he  said,  in 
a  grave,  quiet  tone,  interposing  to  close  the  door  for  her. 
Then,  turning  round,  he  said,  looking  at  her  more  fully  than 
he  was  wont,  "  You  have  heard  it  all,  I  see." 

Romola  quivered.  He  then  was  inclined  to  take  the  initiative. 
He  had  been  to  Tessa.  She  led  the  way  through  the  nearest 
door,  set  down  her  lamp,  and  turned  towards  him  again. 

"  You  must  not  think  despairingly  of  the  consequences," 
said  Tito,  in  a  tone  of  soothing  encouragement,  at  which 
Romola  stood  wondering,  until  he  added,  "  The  accused  have 
too  many  family  ties  with  all  parties  not  to  escape ;  and 
Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero  has  other  things  in  his  favor 
besides  his  age." 

Romola  started,  and  gave  a  cry  as  if  she  had  been  suddenly 
stricken  by  a  sharp  weapon. 

"What !  you  did  not  know  it?  "  said  Tito,  putting  his  hand 
under  her  arm  that  he  might  lead  her  to  a  seat;  but  she 
seemed  to  be  unaware  of  his  touch. 

"  Tell  me,"  she  said,  hastily  —  "  tell  me  what  it  is." 

"A  man,  whose  name  you  may  forget  —  Lamberto  dell' 
Antella  —  who  was  banished,  has  been  seized  within  the 
territory :  a  letter  has  been  found  on  him  of  very  dangerous 
import  to  the  chief  Mediceans,  and  the  scoundrel,  who  was 
once  a  favorite  hound  of  Piero  de'  Medici,  is  ready  now  to 
swear  what  any  one  pleases  against  him  or  his  friends.  Some 
have  made  their  escape,  but  five  are  now  in  prison." 


WHY  TITO   WAS  SAFE.  429 

"  My  godfather  ?  "  said  Romola,  scarcely  above  a  whisper, 
as  Tito  made  a  slight  pause. 

"  Yes  :  I  grieve  to  say  it.  But  along  with  him  there  are 
three,  at  least,  whose  names  have  a  commanding  interest  even 
among  the  popular  party  —  ]Sriccol6  Ridolfi,  Lorenzo  Torna- 
buoni,  and  Giannozzo  Pueci." 

The  tide  of  Eomola's  feelings  had  been  violently  turned 
into  a  new  channel.  In  the  tumult  of  that  moment  there 
could  be  no  check  to  the  words  which  came  as  the  impulsive 
utterance  of  her  long-accumulating  horror.  When  Tito  hao 
named  the  men  of  whom  she  felt  certain  he  was  the  confed- 
erate, she  said,  with  a  recoiling  gesture  and  low-toned  bitter- 
ness,— 

"  And  you  —  you  are  safe  ?  " 

"  You  are  certainly  an  amiable  wife,  my  Romola,"  said 
Tito,  with  the  coldest  irony.     "  Yes ;  I  am  safe." 

They  turned  away  from  each  other  in  silence. 


CHAPTER   LVII. 

WHY    TITO    WAS    SAFE. 

TiTO  had  good  reasons  for  saying  that  he  was  safe.  In  the 
last  three  months,  during  which  he  had  foreseen  the  discovery 
of  the  Medicean  conspirators  as  a  probable  event,  he  had  had 
plenty  of  time  to  provide  himself  with  resources.  He  had 
been  strengthening  his  influence  at  Rome  and  at  Milan,  by 
being  the  medium  of  secret  information  and  indirect  meas- 
ures against  the  Frate  and  the  popular  party ;  he  had  culti- 
vated more  assiduously  than  ever  the  regard  of  this  party,  by 
showing  subtle  evidence  that  his  political  convictions  were 
entirely  on  their  side  ;  and  all  the  while,  instead  of  withdraw- 
ing his  agency  from  the  Medicean s,  he  had  sought  to  be  more  ac- 
tively employed  and  exclusively  trusted  by  them.  It  was  easy 
to  him  to  keep  up  this  triple  game.  The  principle  of  duplicity 
admitted  by  the  Mediceans  on  their  own  behalf  deprived  them 
of  any  standard  by  which  they  could  measure  the  trustworthi- 
ness of  a  colleague  who  had  not,  like  themselves,  hereditary 
interests,  alliances,  and  prejudices,  which  were  intensely 
Medicean.  In  their  minds,  to  deceive  the  opposite  party  was 
fair  stratagem  j  to  deceive  their  own  party  was  a  baseness  to 


430  ROMOLA. 

which  they  felt  no  temptation :  and,  in  using  Tito's  facile  abil- 
ity, they  were  not  keenly  awake  to  the  fact  that  the  absence 
of  traditional  attachments  which  made  him  a  convenient  agent 
was  also  the  absence  of  what  among  themselves  was  the  chief 
guarantee  of  mutual  honor.  Again,  the  Roman  and  Milanese 
friends  of  the  aristocratic  party,  or  Arrabbiati,  who  were  the 
bitterest  enemies  of  Savonarola,  carried  on  a  system  of  under- 
hand correspondence  and  espionage,  in  which  the  deepest 
hypocrisy  was  the  best  service,  and  demanded  the  heaviest 
pay ;  so  that  to  suspect  an  agent  because  he  played  a  part 
strongly  would  have  been  an  absurd  want  of  logic.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Piagnoni  of  the  popular  party,  who  had  the 
directness  that  belongs  to  energetic  conviction,  were  the  more 
inclined  to  credit  Tito  with  sincerity  in  his  political  adhesion 
to  them,  because  he  affected  no  religious  sympathies. 

By  virtue  of  these  conditions,  the  last  three  months  had 
been  a  time  of  flattering  success  to  Tito.  The  result  he  most 
cared  for  was  the  securing  of  a  future  position  for  himself  at 
Rome  or  at  Milan  ;  for  he  had  a  growing  determination,  when 
the  favorable  moment  should  come,  to  quit  Florence  for  one  of 
those  great  capitals  where  life  was  easier,  and  the  rewards  of 
talent  and  learning  were  more  splendid.  At  present,  the  scale 
dipped  in  favor  of  Milan ;  and  if  within  the  year  he  could 
render  certain  services  to  Duke  Ludovico  Sforza,  he  had  the 
prospect  of  a  place  at  the  Milanese  court  which  outweighed 
the  advantages  of  Rome. 

The  revelation  of  the  Medicean  conspiracy,  then,  had  been 
a  subject  of  forethought  to  Tito  ;  but  he  had  not  been  able  to 
foresee  the  mode  in  which  it  would  be  brought  about.  The 
arrest  of  Lamberto  dell'  Antella  with  a  tell-tale  letter  on  his 
person,  and  a  bitter  rancor  against  the  Medici  in  his  heart, 
was  an  incalculable  event.  It  was  not  possible,  in  spite  of  the 
careful  pretexts  with  which  his  agency  had  been  guarded,  that 
Tito  should  escape  implication  :  he  had  never  expected  this  in 
case  of  any  wide  discovery  concerning  the  Medicean  plots. 
But  his  quick  mind  had  soon  traced  out  the  course  that  would 
secure  his  own  safety  with  the  fewest  unpleasant  concomi- 
tants. It  is  agreeable  to  keep  a  whole  skin ;  but  the  skin  still 
remains  an  organ  sensitive  to  the  atmosphere. 

His  reckoning  had  not  deceived  him.  That  night,  before  he 
returned  home,  he  had  secured  the  three  results  for  which  he 
most  cared :  he  was  to  be  freed  from  all  proceedings  against 
him  on  account  of  complicity  with  the  Mediceans  ;  he  was  to 
retain  his  secretaryship  for  another  year,  unless  he  previously 


WHY   riTO    WAS  SAFE.  431 

resigned  it ;  and,  lastly,  the  price  by  which  he  had  obtained 
these  guarantees  was  to  be  kept  as  a  State  secret.  The  price 
would  have  been  thought  heavy  by  most  men  ;  and  Tito  him- 
self would  rather  not  have  paid  it. 

He  had  applied  himself  first  to  win  the  mind  of  Francesco 
Valori,  who  was  not  only  one  of  the  Ten  under  whom  he  im- 
mediately held  his  secretaryship,  but  one  of  the  special  council 
appointed  to  investigate  the  evidence  of  the  plot.  Francesco 
Valori,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  head  of  the  Piagnoui,  a  man 
with  certain  fine  qualities  that  were  not  incompatible  with 
violent  partisanship,  with  an  arrogant  temper  that  alienated 
his  friends,  nor  with  bitter  personal  animosities  —  one  of  the 
bitterest  being  directed  against  Bernardo  del  Nero.  To  him, 
in  a  brief  private  interview,  after  obtaining  a  pledge  of 
secrecy,  Tito  avowed  his  own  agency  for  the  Mediceans  — 
an  agency  induced  by  motives  about  which  he  was  very  frank, 
declaring  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  always  believed  their 
efforts  futile,  and  that  he  sincerely  preferred  the  maintenance 
of  the  popular  government ;  affected  to  confide  to  Valori,  as  a 
secret,  his  own  personal  dislike  for  Bernardo  del  Nero  ;  and, 
after  this  preparation,  came  to  the  important  statement  that 
there  was  another  Medicean  plot,  of  which,  if  he  obtained 
certain  conditions  from  the  government,  he  could,  by  a  jour- 
ney to  Siena  and  into  Romagna,  where  Piero  de'  Medici  was 
again  trying  to  gather  forces,  obtain  documentary  evidence  to 
lay  before  the  council.  To  this  end  it  was  essential  that  his 
character  as  a  Medicean  agent  should  be  unshaken  for  all 
Mediceans,  and  hence  the  fact  that  he  had  been  a  source  of 
information  to  the  authorities  must  be  wrapped  in  j)rofound 
secrecy.  Still,  some  odor  of  the  facts  might  escape  in  spite 
of  precaution,  and  before  Tito  could  incur  the  unpleasant 
consequences  of  acting  against  his  friends,  he  must  be  assured 
of  immunity  from  any  prosecution  as  a  Medicean,  and  from 
deprivation  of  office  for  a  year  to  come. 

These  propositions  did  not  sound  in  the  ear  of  Francesco 
Valori  precisely  as  they  sound  to  us.  Valori's  mind  was  not 
intensely  bent  on  the  estimation  of  Tito's  conduct ;  and  it  was 
intensely  bent  on  procuring  an  extreme  sentence  against  the 
five  prisoners.  There  were  sure  to  be  immense  efforts  to  save 
them  ;  and  it  was  to  be  wished  (on  public  grounds)  that  the 
evidence  against  them  should  be  of  the  strongest,  so  as  to 
alarm  all  well-affected  men  at  the  dangers  of  clemency.  The 
character  of  legal  proceedings  at  that  time  implied  that  evi- 
dence was  one  of  those  desirable  things  which  could  only  be 


4S'2  ROMOLA. 

come  zt  by  foul  means.  To  catch  a  few  people  and  torture 
them  into  confessing  everybody's  guilt  was  one  step  towards 
justice;  and  it  was  not  always  easy  to  see  the  next,  unless  a 
traitor  turned  up.  Lamberto  dell'  Antella  had  been  tortured 
in  aid  of  his  previous  willingness  to  tell  more  than  he  knew ; 
nevertheless,  additional  and  stronger  facts  were  desirable, 
especially  against  Bernardo  del  Nero,  who,  so  far  as  appeared 
hitherto,  had  simply  refrained  from  betraying  the  late  plot 
after  having  tried  in  vain  to  discourage  it ;  for  the  welfare  of 
Florence  demanded  that  the  guilt  of  Bernardo  del  Nero  should 
be  put  in  the  strongest  light.  So  Francesco  Valori  zealously 
believed ;  and  perhaps  he  was  not  himself  aware  that  the 
strength  of  his  zeal  was  determined  by  his  hatred.  He  de- 
cided that  Tito's  proposition  ought  to  be  accepted,  laid  it 
before  his  colleagues  without  disclosing  Tito's  name,  and  won 
them  over  to  his  opinion.  Late  in  the  day,  Tito  was  admitted 
to  an  audience  of  the  Special  Council,  and  produced  a  deep 
sensation  among  them  by  revealing  another  plot  for  insuring 
the  mastery  of  Florence  to  Piero  de'  Medici,  which  was  to 
have  been  carried  into  execution  in  the  middle  of  this  very 
month  of  August.  Documentary  evidence  on  this  subject 
would  do  more  than  anything  else  to  make  the  right  course 
clear.  He  received  a  commission  to  start  for  Siena  by  break 
of  day ;  and,  besides  this,  he  carried  away  with  him  from  the 
council  chamber  a  written  guarantee  of  his  immunity  and  of 
his  retention  of  office. 

Among  the  twenty  Florentines  who  bent  their  grave  eyes 
on  Tito,  as  he  stood  gracefully  before  them,  speaking  of 
startling  things  with  easy  periphrasis,  and  with  that  appar- 
ently unaffected  admission  of  being  actuated  by  motives  short 
of  the  highest,  which  is  often  the  intensest  affectation,  there 
were  several  whose  minds  were  not  too  entirely  pre-occupied 
to  pass  a  new  judgment  on  him  in  these  new  circumstances ; 
they  silently  concluded  that  this  ingenious  and  serviceable 
Greek  was  in  future  rather  to  be  used  for  public  needs  than 
for  private  intimacy.  Unprincipled  men  were  useful,  enabling 
those  who  had  more  scruples  to  keep  their  hands  tolerably 
clean  in  a  world  where  there  was  much  dirty  work  to  be 
done.  Indeed,  it  was  not  clear  to  respectable  Florentine 
brains,  unless  they  held  the  Frate's  extravagant  belief  in  a 
possible  purity  and  loftiness  to  be  striven  for  on  this  earth, 
how  life  was  to  be  carried  on  in  any  department  without 
human  instruments  whom  it  would  not  be  unbecoming  to  kick 
or  to  spit  upon  in  the  act  of    handing  them  their   wages. 


WHY  TITO    WAS  SAFE.  433 

Some  of  these  very  men  who  passed  a  tacit  judgment  on 
Tito  were  shortly  to  be  engaged  in  a  memorable  transaction 
that  could  by  no  means  have  been  carried  through  without  the 
use  of  an  unscrupulousness  as  decided  as  his  ;  but,  as  their 
own  bright  poet  Pulci  had  said  for  them,  it  was  one  thing  to 
love  the  fruits  of  treachery,  and  another  thing  to  love  trait- 
ors, — 

"  II  tradimento  a  uiolti  piace  assai, 
Ma  il  traditore  a  snun  uon  piacque  mai." 

The  same  society  has  had  a  gibbet  for  the  murderer  and  a 
gibbet  for  the  martyr,  an  execrating  hiss  for  a  dastardly  act, 
and  as  loud  a  hiss  for  many  a  word  of  generous  truthfulness 
or  just  insight :  a  mixed  condition  of  things  which  is  the  sign, 
not  of  hopeless  confusion,  but  of  struggling  order. 

For  Tito  himself,  he  was  not  unaware  that  he  had  sunk  a 
little  in  the  estimate  of  the  men  who  had  accepted  his  ser- 
vices. He  had  that  degree  of  self-contemplation  which  necessa- 
rily accompanies  the  habit  of  acting  on  well-considered  reasons, 
of  whatever  quality  ;  and  if  he  could  have  chosen,  he  would  have 
declined  to  see  himself  disapproved  by  men  of  the  world.  He 
had  never  meant  to  be  disapproved ;  he  had  meant  always  to  con-  / 
duct  himself  so  ably  that  if  he  acted  in  opposition  to  the  standard  r~" 
of  other  men  they  should  not  be  aware  of  it;  and  the  barrier  be- 
tween himself  and  Eomola  had  been  raised  hj  the  impossibility 
of  such  concealment  with  her.  He  shrank  from  condemnatory 
judgments  as  from  a  climate  to  which  he  could  not  adapt 
himself.  But  things  were  not  so  plastic  in  the  hands  of 
cleverness  as  could  be  wished,  and  events  had  turned  out 
inconveniently.  He  had  really  no  rancor  against  Messer 
Bernardo  del  Nero ;  he  had  a  personal  liking  for  Lorenzo 
Tornabuoni  and  Giannozzo  Pucci.  He  had  served  them  very 
ably,  and  in  such  a  way  that  if  their  party  had  been  winners 
he  would  have  merited  high  reward ;  but  was  he  to  relinquish 
all  the  agreeable  fruits  of  life  because  their  party  had  failed  ? 
His  proffer  of  a  little  additional  proof  against  them  would 
probably  have  no  influence  on  their  fate ;  in  fact,  he  felt  con- 
vinced they  would  escape  any  extreme  consequences ;  but  if 
he  had  not  given  it,  his  own  fortunes,  which  made  a  promising 
fabric,  would  have  been  utterly  ruined.  And  what  motive  . 
could  any  man  really  have,  except  his  own  interest  ?  Floren-  -V 
tines  whose  passions  were  engaged  in  their  petty  and  precari- 
ous political  schemes  might  have  no  self-interest  separable 
from  family  pride  and   tenacity  in   old   hatreds  and  attach- 


434  ROM  OLA. 

ments ;  a  modern  simpleton  who  swallowed  whole  one  of  the 
old  systems  of  philosophy,  and  took  the  indigestion  it  occa- 
sioned for  the  signs  of  a  divine  afflux  or  the  voice  of  an  inward 
monitor,  might  see  his  interest  in  a  form  of  self-conceit  which 
he  called  self-rewarding  virtue  ;  fanatics  who  believed  in  the 
coming  Scourge  and  Renovation  might  see  their  own  interest 
in  a  future  palm-branch  and  white  robe  :  but  no  man  of  clear 
intellect  allowed  his  course  to  be  determined  by  such  puerile 
impulses  or  questionable  inward  fumes.  Did  not  Pontanus, 
poet  and  philosopher  of  unrivalled  Latinity,  make  the  finest 
possible  oration  at  Naples  to  welcome  the  French  king,  who 
had  come  to  dethrone  the  learned  orator's  royal  friend  and 
patron  ?  and  still  Pontanus  held  up  his  head  and  prospered. 
Men  did  not  really  care  about  these  things,  except  when  their 
personal  spleen  was  touched.  It  was  weakness  only  that  was 
despised ;  power  of  any  sort  carried  its  immunity  ;  and  no 
man,  unless  by  very  rare  good  fortune,  could  mount  high  in 
the  world  without  incurring  a  few  unpleasant  necessities 
which  laid  him  open  to  enmity,  and  perhaps  to  a  little  hiss- 
ing, when  enmity  wanted  a  pretext. 

It  was  a  faint  prognostic  of  that  hissing,  gathered  by  Tito 
from  certain  indications  when  he  was  before  the  council, 
which  gave  his  present  conduct  the  character  of  an  epoch  to 
him,  and  made  him  dwell  on  it  with  argumentative  vindication. 
It  was  not  that  lie  was  taking  a  deeper  step  in  wrong-doing, 
\^y  for  it  was  not  possible  that  he  should  feel  any  tie  to  the 
Mediceans  to  be  stronger  than  the  tie  to  his  father ;  but  his 
conduct  to  his  father  had  been  hidden  by  successful  lying :  his 
present  act  did  not  admit  of  total  concealment  —  in  its  very 
nature  it  was  a  revelation.  And  Tito  winced  under  his  new 
liability  to  disesteem. 

Well !  a  little  patience,  and  in  another  year,  or  perhaps  in 
half  a  year,  he  might  turn  his  back  on  these  hard,  eager  Flor- 
entines, with  their  futile  quarrels  and  sinking  fortunes.  His 
brilliant  success  at  Florence  had  had  some  ugly  flaws  in  it : 
he  had  fallen  in  love  with  the  wrong  woman,  and  Baldassarre 
had  come  back  under  incalculable  circumstances.  But  as  Tito 
galloped  with  a  loose  rein  towards  Siena,  he  saw  a  future 
before  him  in  which  he  would  no  longer  be  haunted  by  those 
mistakes.  He  had  much  money  safe  out  of  Florence  already  : 
he  was  in  the  fresh  ripeness  of  eight  and  twenty  ;  he  was  con- 
scious of  well-tried  skill.  Could  he  not  strip  himself  of  the 
past,  as  of  rehearsal  clothing,  and  throw  away  the  old  bundle, 
to  robe  himself  for  the  real  scene  ? 


^' 


A   FINAL    UNDERSTANDING.  435 

It  did  not  enter  into  Tito's  meditations  on  the  future,  that, 
on  issuing  from  the  council  chamber  and  descending  the  stairs, 
he  had  brushed  against  a  man  whose  face  he  had  not  stayed 
to  recognize  in  the  lamplight.  The  man  was  Ser  Ceccone  — 
also  willing  to  serve  the  State  by  giving  information  against 
unsuccessful  employers. 


CHAPTER  LVIII. 

A    FINAL    UNDERSTANDING. 

Tito  soon  returned  from  Siena,  but  almost  immediately  set 
out  on  another  journey,  from  which  he  did  not  return  till  the 
seventeenth  of  August.  Nearly  a  fortnight  had  passed  since 
the  arrest  of  the  accused,  and  still  they  were  in  prison,  still 
their  fate  was  uncertain.  Romola  had  felt  during  this  inter- 
val as  if  all  cares  were  suspended  for  her,  other  than  watching 
the  fluctuating  probabilities  concerning  that  fate.  Sometimes 
they  seemed  strongly  in  favor  of  the  prisoners ;  for  the 
chances  of  effective  interest  on  their  behalf  w^ere  heightened 
by  delay,  and  an  indefinite  prospect  of  delay  was  opened  by 
the  reluctance  of  all  persons  in  authority  to  incur  the  odium 
attendant  on  any  decision.  On  the  one  side  there  was  a  loud 
cry  that  the  Republic  was  in  danger,  and  that  lenity  to  the 
prisoners  would  be  the  signal  of  attack  for  all  its  enemies ; 
on  the  other,  there  was  a  certainty  that  a  sentence  of  death 
and  confiscation  of  property  passed  on  five  citizens  of  distin- 
guished name,  would  entail  the  rancorous  hatred  of  their 
relatives  on  all  who  were  conspicuously  instrumental  to  such 
a  sentence. 

The  final  judgment  properly  lay  with  the  Eight,  who  pre- 
sided over  the  administration  of  criminal  justice ;  and  the 
sentence  depended  on  a  majority  of  six  votes.  But  the  Eight 
shrank  from  their  onerous  responsibility^  and  asked  in  this 
exceptional  case  to  have  it  shared  by  the  Signoria  (or  the  Gon- 
faloniere  and  the  eight  Priors).  The  Signoria  in  its  turn 
shrugged  its  shoulders,  and  proposed  the  appeal  to  the  Great 
Council.  For,  according  to  a  law  passed  by  the  earnest  per- 
suasion of  Savonarola  nearly  three  years  before,  whenever  a 
citizen  was  condemned  to  death  by  the  fatal  six  votes  (called 
the  set  fave  or  six  beans,  beans  being  in  more  senses  than  one 


436  ROMOLA. 

the  political  pulse  of  Florence),  he  had  the  right  of  appealing 
from  that  sentence  to  the  Great  Council. 

But  in  this  stage  of  the  business,  the  friends  of  the  accused 
resisted  the  appeal,  determined  chiefly  by  the  wish  to  gain 
delay ;  and,  in  fact,  strict  legality  required  that  sentence 
should  have  been  passed  prior  to  the  appeal.  Their  resist- 
ance prevailed,  and  a  middle  course  was  taken ;  the  sentence 
was  referred  to  a  large  assembly  convened  on  the  seventeenth, 
consisting  of  all  the  higher  magistracies,  the  smaller  council 
or  Senate  of  Eighty,  and  a  select  number  of  citizens. 

On  this  day  Romola,  with  anxiety  heightened  by  the  possi- 
bility that  before  its  close  her  godfather's  fate  might  be 
decided,  had  obtained  leave  to  see  him  for  the  second  time, 
but  only  in  the  presence  of  witnesses.  She  had  returned  to 
the  Via  de'  Bardi  in  company  with  her  cousin  Brigida,  still 
ignorant  whether  the  council  had  come  to  any  decisive  issue ; 
and  Monna  Brigida  had  gone  out  again  to  await  the  moment- 
ous news  at  the  house  of  a  friend  belonging  to  one  of  the 
magistracies,  that  she  might  bring  back  authentic  tidings  as 
soon  as  they  were  to  be  had. 

Komola  had  sunk  on  the  first  seat  in  the  bright  saloon,  too 
much  agitated,  too  sick  at  heart,  to  care  about  her  place,  or  be 
conscious  of  discordance  in  the  objects  that  surrounded  her. 
She  sat  with  her  back  to  the  door,  resting  her  head  on  her 
hands.  It  seemed  a  long  while  since  Monna  Brigida  had  gone, 
and  Romola  was  expecting  her  return.  But  when  the  door 
opened  she  knew  it  was  not  Monna  Brigida  who  entered. 

Since  she  had  parted  from  Tito  on  that  memorable  night, 
she  had  had  no  external  proof  to  warrant  her  belief  that  he 
had  won  his  safety  by  treachery ;  on  the  contrary,  she  had  had 
evidence  that  he  was  still  trusted  by  the  Mediceans,  and  was 
believed  by  them  to  be  accomplishing  certain  errands  of  theirs 
in  Romagna,  under  cover  of  fulfilling  a  commission  of  the 
government.  For  the  obscurity  in  which  the  evidence  con- 
cerning the  conspirators  was  shrouded  allowed  it  to  be  under- 
stood that  Tito  had  escaped  any  implication. 

But  Romola's  suspicion  Avas  not  to  be  dissipated  :  her  hor- 
ror of  his  conduct  towards  Baldassarre  projected  itself  over 
every  conception  of  his  acts ;  it  was  as  if  she  had  seen  him 
committing  a  murder,  and  had  had  a  diseased  impression  ever 
after  that  his  hands  were  covered  with  fresh  blood. 

As  she  heard  his  step  on  the  stone  floor,  a  chill  shudder 
passed  through  her ;  she  could  not  turn  round,  she  could  not 
rise  to  give  any  greeting.     He  did  not  speak,  but  after  an 


A   FINAL   UNDERSTANDING.  437 

instant's  pause  took  a  seat  on  the  other  side  of  the  table  just 
opposite  to  her.  Then  she  raised  her  eyes  and  looked  at  him  : 
but  she  was  mute.  He  did  not  show  any  irritation,  but  said, 
coolly,  — 

"This  meeting  corresponds  with  our  parting,  Romola.  But 
I  understand  that  it  is  a  moment  of  terrible  suspense.  I  am 
come,  however,  if  you  will  listen  to  me,  to  bring  you  the  relief 
of  hope." 

She  started,  and  altered  her  position,  but  looked  at  him 
dubiously. 

''  It  will  not  be  unwelcome  to  you  to  hear  —  even  though  it 
is  I  who  tell  it  —  that  the  council  is  prorogued  till  the  twenty- 
first.  The  Eight  have  been  frightened  at  last  into  passing  a 
sentence  of  condemnation,  but  the  demand  has  now  been  made 
on  behalf  of  the  condemned  for  the  Appeal  to  the  Great 
Council." 

Eomola's  face  lost  its  dubious  expression  ;  she  asked 
eagerly,— 

"  And  when  is  it  to  be  made  ?  " 

"  It  has  not  yet  been  granted  ;  but  it  may  be  granted.  The 
Special  Council  is  to  meet  again  on  the  twenty-first  to  delib- 
erate whether  the  Appeal  shall  be  allowed  or  not.  In  the 
mean  time  there  is  an  interval  of  three  days,  in  which  chances 
may  occur  in  favor  of  the  prisoners  —  in  which  interest  may 
be  used  on  their  behalf." 

Romola  started  from  her  seat.  The  color  had  risen  to  her 
face  like  a  visible  thought,  and  her  hands  trembled.  In  that 
moment  her  feeling  towards  Tito  was  forgotten. 

"Possibly,"  said  Tito,  also  rising,  "your  own  intention  may 
have  anticipated  what  I  was  going  to  say.  You  are  thinking 
of  the  Frate." 

"  I  am,"  said  Eomola,  looking  at  him  with  surprise.  "  Has 
he  done  anything  ?     Is  there  anj-thing  to  tell  me  ?  " 

"  Only  this.  It  was  Messer  Francesco  Valori's  bitterness 
and  violence  which  chiefly  determined  the  course  of  things  in 
the  council  to-day.  Half  the  men  who  gave  in  their  opinion 
against  the  prisoners  were  frightened  into  it,  and  there  are 
numerous  friends  of  Fra  Girolamo  both  in  this  Special  Council 
and  out  of  it  who  are  strongly  opposed  to  the  sentence  of 
death  —  Piero  Guicciardini,  for  example,  who  is  one  member 
of  the  Signoria  that  made  the  stoutest  resistance  ;  and  there 
is  Giovan  Battista  Pidolfi,  who,  Piagnone  as  he  is,  will  not 
lightly  forgive  the  death  of  his  brother  Niccolo." 

"But  how  can  the  Appeal  be  denied,"  said  Romola,  indig- 


438  ROMOLA. 

nantly,  "  when  it  is  the  law  —  when  it  was  one  of  the  chief 
glories  of  the  popular  government  to  have  passed  the  law  ?  " 

"  They  call  this  an  exceptional  case.  Of  course  there  are 
ingenious  arguments,  but  there  is  much  more  of  loud  bluster 
about  the  danger  of  the  Kepublic.  But,  you  see,  no  opposition 
could  prevent  the  assembly  from  being  prorogued,  and  a  certain 
powerful  influence  rightly  applied  during  the  next  three  days 
might  determine  the  wavering  courage  of  those  who  desire 
that  the  Appeal  should  be  granted,  and  might  even  give  a 
check  to  the  headlong  enmity  of  Francesco  Valori.  It  happens 
to  have  come  to  my  knowledge  that  the  Frate  has  so  far  inter- 
fered as  to  send  a  message  to  him  in  favor  of  Lorenzo  Torna- 
buoni.  I  know  you  can  sometimes  have  access  to  the  Frate : 
it  might  at  all  events  be  worth  while  to  use  your  privilege 
now." 

''  It  is  true,"  said  Romola,  with  an  air  of  abstraction.  "  I 
cannot  believe  that  the  Frate  would  approve  denying  the 
Appeal." 

"  I  heard  it  said  by  more  than  one  person  in  the  court  of  the 
Palazzo,  before  I  came  away,  that  it  would  be  to  the  everlast- 
ing discredit  of  Fra  Girolamo  if  he  allowed  a  government 
which  is  almost  entirely  made  up  of  his  party,  to  deny  the 
Appeal  without  entering  his  protest,  when  he  has  been  boast- 
ing in  his  books  and  sermons  that  it  was  he  who  got  the  law 
passed.^  But  between  ourselves,  with  all  respect  for  your 
Frate's  ability,  my  Romola,  he  has  got  into  the  practice  of 
preaching  that  form  of  human  sacrifices  called  killing  tyrants 
and  wicked  malcontents,  which  some  of  his  followers  are 
likely  to  think  inconsistent  with  lenity  in  the  present  case." 

"  I  know,  I  know,"  said  Romola,  with  a  look  and  tone  of 
pain.  "But  he  is  driven  into  those  excesses  of  speech.  It 
used  to  be  different.  I  tvill  ask  for  an  interview.  I  cannot 
rest  without  it.     I  trust  in  the  greatness  of  his  heart." 

She  was  not  looking  at  Tito;  her  eyes  were  bent  with  a 
vague  gaze  towards  the  ground,  and  she  had  no  distinct  con- 
sciousness that  the  words  she  heard  came  from  her  husband. 

"  Better  lose  no  time,  then,"  said  Tito,  with  unmixed  suavity, 

'  The  most  recent,  and  in  some  respects  tlie  best,  biographer  of  Savonarola,  Signor 
Villari,  endeavors  to  show  that  tlie  Law  of  Appeal  ultimately  enacted,  being  wider 
than  the  law  originally  contemiilalfd  by  Savonarola,  was  a  source  of  bitter  annoyance 
to  him,  as  a  contrivance  of  tlie  arislocratic  i)arty  for  attaching  to  the  measures  of  the 
popular  government  the  injurious  results  of  license.  But  in  taking  this  view,  the 
estimable  biographer  lost  sight  of  the  fact  that,  not  only  in  his  sermons,  but  in  a 
deliberately  prepnred  book  (the  Com  pent}  hivi  Ket'clationum)  written  long  after  the 
Appeal  had  become  law,  Savonarola  enumerates  among  the  benefits  secured  to 
Floren(re,  "  the  Appeal  from  the  Six  Votes,  advocated  by  me,  for  the  greater  sectirit^ 
of  the  citizens." 


A  FIN  A  I  UNDERSTANDING.  439 

moving  his  cap  round  in  liis  hands  as  if  he  were  about  to  put 
it  on  and  depart.  "  And  now,  Romola,  you  will  perhaps  be 
able  to  see,  in  spite  of  prejudice,  that  my  wishes  go  with  yours 
in  this  matter.  You  will  not  regard  the  misfortune  of  my 
safety  as  an  offence." 

Something  like  an  electric  shock  passed  through  Romola: 
it  was  the  full  consciousness  of  her  husband's  presence  return- 
ing to  her.     She  looked  at  him  without  speaking. 

"  At  least,"  he  added,  in  a  slightly  harder  tone,  "  you  will 
endeavor  to  base  our  intercourse  on  some  other  reasonings  than 
that  because  an  evil  deed  is  possible,  /  have  done  it.  Am  I 
alone  to  be  beyond  the  pale  of  your  extensive  charity  ?  " 

The  feeling  which  had  been  driven  back  from  Romola's  lips 
a  fortnight  before  rose  again  with  the  gathered  force  of  a  tidal 
wave.  She  spoke  with  a  decision  which  told  him  that  she 
was  careless  of  consequences. 

"  It  is  too  late,  Tito.  There  is  no  killing  the  suspicion  that 
deceit  has  once  begotten.  And  now  I  know  everything.  I 
know  who  that  old  man  was  :  he  was  your  father,  to  whom 
you  owe  everything  —  to  whom  you  owe  more  than  if  you  had 
been  his  own  child.  By  the  side  of  that,  it  is  a  small  thing 
that  you  broke  my  trust  and  my  father's.  As  long  as  you 
deny  the  truth  about  that  old  man,  there  is  a  horror  rising 
between  us  :  the  law  that  should  make  us  one  can  never  be 
obeyed.  I  too  am  a  human  being.  I  have  a  soul  of  my  own 
that  abhors  your  actions.  Our  union  is  a  pretence  —  as  if  a 
perpetual  lie  could  be  a  sacred  marriage." 

Tito  did  not  answer  immediately.  When  he  did  speak  it 
was  with  a  calculated  caution,  that  was  stimulated  by  alarm. 

"  And  you  mean  to  carry  out  that  independence  by  quitting 
me,  I  presume  ?  " 

"  I  desire  to  quit  you,"  said  Romola,  impetuously. 

"  And  supposing  I  do  not  submit  to  part  with  what  the  law 
gives  me  some  security  for  retaining  ?  You  will  then,  of  course, 
proclaim  your  reasons  in  the  ear  of  all  Florence.  You  will 
bring  forward  your  mad  assassin,  who  is  doubtless  ready  to 
obey  your  call,  and  you  will  tell  the  world  that  you  believe 
his  testimony  because  he  is  so  rational  as  to  desire  to  assassi- 
nate me.  You  will  first  inform  the  Signoria  that  I  am  a 
Medicean  conspirator,  and  then  you  will  inform  the  Mediceans 
that  I  have  betrayed  them,  and  in  both  cases  you  will  offer 
the  excellent  proof  that  you  believe  me  capable  in  general  of 
everything  bad.  It  will  certainly  be  a  striking  position  for  a 
wife  to  adopt.     And   if,  on  such  evidence,  you  succeed   in 


440  ROM  OLA. 

holding  me  up  to  infamy,  you  will  have  surpassed  all  the 
heroines  of  the  Greek  drama." 

He  paused  a  moment,  but  she  stood  mute.  He  went  on 
with  the  sense  of  mastery. 

"  I  believe  you  have  no  other  grievance  against  me  —  except 
that  I  have  failed  in  fulfilling  some  lofty  indefinite  conditions 
on  which  you  gave  me  your  wifely  affection,  so  that,  by  with^ 
drawing  it,  you  have  gradually  reduced  me  to  the  careful 
supply  of  your  wants  as  a  fair  Piagnone  of  high  condition 
and  liberal  charities.  I  think  your  success  in  gibbeting  me  is 
not  certain.  But  doubtless  you  would  begin  by  winning  the 
ear  of  Messer  Bernardo  del  Nero  ?  " 

"  Why  do  I  speak  of  anything  ?  "  cried  Romola,  in  anguish, 
sinking  on  her  chair  again.  "  It  is  hateful  in  me  to  be  think- 
ing of  myself." 

She  did  not  notice  when  Tito  left  the  room,  or  know  how 
long  it  was  before  the  door  opened  to  admit  Monna  Brigida. 
But  in  that  instant  she  started  up  and  said,  — 

"  Cousin,  we  must  go  to  San  Marco  directly.  I  must  see 
my  confessor,  Fra  Salvestro." 


CHAPTEK   LIX. 

PLEADING. 

The  morning  was  in  its  early  brightness  when  Romola  was 
again  on  her  way  to  San  Marco,  having  obtained  through 
Fra  Salvestro,  the  evening  before,  the  promise  of  an  interview 
with  Fra  Girolamo  in  the  chapter-house  of  the  convent.  The 
rigidity  with  which  Savonarola  guarded  his  life  from  all  the 
pretexts  of  calumny  made  such  interviews  very  rare,  and 
whenever  they  were  granted,  they  were  kept  free  from  any 
appearance  of  mystery.  For  this  reason  the  hour  chosen  was 
one  at  which  there  were  likely  to  be  other  visitors  in  the 
outer  cloisters  of  San  Marco. 

She  chose  to  pass  through  the  heart  of  the  city  that  she 
might  notice  the  signs  of  public  feeling.  Every  loggia,  every 
convenient  corner  of  the  piazza,  every  shop  that  made  a 
rendezvous  for  gossips,  was  astir  with  the  excitement  of 
gratuitous  debate  ;  a  languishing  trade  tending  to  make 
political  discussion  all  the  more  vigorous.     It  was  clear  that 


PLEADING.  441 

the  parties  for  and  against  the  death  of  the  conspirators  were 
bent  on  making  the  fullest  use  of  the  three  days'  interval  in 
order  to  determine  the  popular  mood.  Already  handbills 
were  in  circulation  ;  some  presenting,  in  large  print,  the 
alternative  of  justice  on  the  conspirators  or  ruin  to  the 
Republic  ;  others  in  equally  large  print  urging  the  observance 
of  the  law  and  the  granting  of  the  Appeal.  Kound  these 
jutting  islets  of  black  capitals  there  were  lakes  of  smaller 
characters  setting  forth  arguments  less  necessary  to  be  read : 
for  it  was  an  opinion  entertained  at  that  time  (in  the  first 
flush  of  triumph  at  the  discovery  of  printing),  that  there  was 
no  argument  more  widely  convincing  than  question-begging 
phrases  in  large  type. 

Romola,  however,  cared  especially  to  become  acquainted 
with  the  arguments  in  smaller  type,  and,  though  obliged  to 
hasten  forward,  she  looked  round  anxiously  as  she  went  that 
she  might  miss  no  opportunity  of  securing  copies.  For  a 
long  way  she  saw  none  but  such  as  were  in  the  hands  of  eager 
readers,  or  else  fixed  on  the  walls,  from  which  in  some  places 
the  sbirri  were  tearing  them  down.  But  at  last,  passing 
behind  San  Giovanni  with  a  quickened  pace  that  she  might 
avoid  the  many  acquaintances  who  frequented  the  piazza,  she 
saw  Bratti  with  a  stock  of  handbills  which  he  appeared  to  be 
exchanging  for  small  coin  with  the  passers-by.  She  was  too 
familiar  with  the  humble  life  of  Florence  for  Bratti  to  be  any 
stranger  to  her,  and  turning  towards  him  she  said,  "Have 
you  two  sorts  of  handbills,  Bratti  ?  Let  me  have  them 
quickly." 

"  Two  sorts,"  said  Bratti,  separating  the  wet  sheets  with  a 
slowness  that  tried  Romola's  patience.  "  There's  '  Law,'  and 
there's  '  Justice.' " 

"  Which  sort  do  you  sell  most  of  ?  " 

" '  Justice  '  —  '  Justice  '  goes  the  quickest,  —  so  I  raised  the 
price,  and  made  it  two  danari.  But  then  I  bethought  me  the 
'  Law '  was  good  ware  too,  and  had  as  good  a  right  to  be 
charged  for  as  '  Justice ; '  for  people  set  no  store  by  cheap 
things,  and  if  I  sold  the  '  Law  '  at  one  danaro,  I  should  be 
doing  it  a  wrong.  And  I'm  a  fair  trader.  '  Law,'  or  '  Justice,' 
it's  all  one  to  me  ;  they're  good  wares.  I  got  'em  both  for 
nothing,  and  I  sell  'em  at  a  fair  profit.  But  you'll  want  more 
than  one  of  a  sort  ?  " 

"  No,  no ;  here's  a  white  quattrino  for  the  two,"  said 
Eomola,  folding  up  the  bills  and  hurrying  away. 

She  was  soon  in  the  outer  cloisters  of  San  Marco,  where 


442  ROMOLA. 

Era  Salvestro  was  awaiting  her  under  the  cloister,  but  did  not 
notice  the  approach  of  her  light  step.  He  was  chatting, 
according  to  his  habit,  with  lay  visitors ;  for  under  the 
auspices  of  a  government  friendly  to  the  Frate,  the  timidity 
about  frequenting  San  Marco,  which  had  followed  on  the  first 
shock  of  the  Excommunication,  had  been  gradually  giving 
way.  In  one  of  these  lay  visitors  she  recognized  a  well- 
known  satellite  of  Francesco  Valori,  named  Andrea  Cambini, 
who  was  narrating  or  expounding  with  emphatic  gesticulation, 
while  Fra  Salvestro  was  listening  with  that  air  of  trivial 
curiosity  which  tells  that  the  listener  cares  very  much  about 
news  and  very  little  about  its  quality.  This  characteristic  of 
her  confessor,  which  was  always  repulsive  to  Romola,  was 
made  exasperating  to  her  at  this  moment  by  the  certainty  she 
gathered,  from  the  disjointed  words  which  reached  her  ear, 
that  Cambini  was  narrating  something  relative  to  the  fate  of 
the  conspirators.  She  chose  not  to  approach  the  group,  but 
as  soon  as  she  saw  that  she  had  arrested  Fra  Salvestro's  atten- 
tion, she  turned  towards  the  door  of  the  chapter-house,  while 
he,  making  a  sign  of  approval,  disappeared  within  the  inner 
cloister.  A  lay  Brother  stood  ready  to  open  the  door  of  the 
chapter-house  for  her,  and  closed  it  behind  her  as  she  entered. 

Once  more  looked  at  by  those  sad  frescoed  figures  which 
had  seemed  to  be  mourning  with  her  at  the  death  of  her 
brother  Dino,  it  was  inevitable  that  something  of  that  scene 
should  come  back  to  her ;  but  the  intense  occupation  of  her 
mind  with  the  present  made  the  remembrance  less  a  retrospect 
than  an  indistinct  recurrence  of  impressions  which  blended 
themselves  with  her  agitating  fears,  as  if  her  actual  anxiety 
were  a  revival  of  the  strong  yearning  she  had  once  before 
brought  to  this  spot  —  to  be  repelled  by  marble  rigidity.  She 
gave  no  space  for  the  remembrance  to  become  more  definite, 
for  she  at  once  opened  the  handbills,  thinking  she  should 
perhaps  be  able  to  read  them  in  the  interval  before  Fra 
Girolamo  appeared.  But  by  the  time  she  had  read  to  the  end 
of  the  one  that  recommended  the  observance  of  the  law,  the 
door  was  opening,  and  doubling  up  the  papers  she  stood 
expectant. 

When  the  Frate  had  entered  she  knelt,  according  to  the 
usual  practice  of  those  who  saw  liim  in  private  ;  but  as  soon 
as  he  had  uttered  a  benedictory  greeting  she  rose  and  stood 
opposite  to  him  at  a  few  yards'  distance.  Owing  to  his  seclu- 
sion since  he  had  been  excommunicated,  it  had  been  an  unusu- 
ally long  while  since  she  had  seen  him,  and  the  late   months 


TOWER    AND    CLOISTERS    OF    SAN    MARCO, 


PLEADING.  448 

had.  visibly  deepened  in  his  face  the  marks  of  over-taxed 
mental  activity  and  bodily  severities ;  and  yet  Romola  was 
not  so  conscious  of  this  change  as  of  another,  which  was  less 
definable.  Was  it  that  the  expression  of  serene  elevation 
and  pure  human  fellowship  which  had  once  moved  her  was  no 
longer  present  in  the  same  force,  or  was  it  that  the  sense  of 
his  being  divided  from  her  in  her  feeling  about  her  godfather 
roused  the  slumbering  sources  of  alienation,  and  mai-red  her 
own  vision  ?  Perhaps  both  causes  were  at  work.  Our  rela- 
tions with  our  fellow-men  are  most  often  determined  by  coin- 
cident currents  of  that  sort ;  the  inexcusable  word  or  deed 
seldom  comes  until  after  affection  or  reverence  has  been 
already  enfeebled  by  the  strain  of  repeated  excuses. 

It  was  true  that  Savonarola's  glance  at  Romola  had  some 
of  that  hardness  which  is  caused  by  an  egotistic  prepossession. 
He  divined  that  the  interview  she  had  sought  was  to  turn  on 
the  fate  of  the  conspirators,  a  subject  on  which  he  had  already 
had  to  quell  inner  voices  that  might  become  loud  again  when 
encouraged  from  without.  Seated  in  his  cell,  correcting  the 
sheets  of  his  "  Triumph  of  the  Cross,"  it  was  easier  to  repose 
on  a  resolution  of  neutrality. 

•'  It  is  a  question  of  moment,  doubtless,  on  which  you  wished 
to  see  me,  my  daughter,"  he  began,  in  a  tone  which  was  gentle 
rather  from  self-control  than  from  immediate  inclination. 
"  I  know  you  are  not  wont  to  lay  stress  on  small  matters." 

"Father,  you  know  what  it  is  before  I  tell  you,"  said 
Romola,  forgetting  everything  else  as  soon  as  she  began  to 
pour  forth  her  plea.  "  You  know  what  I  am  caring  for  —  it 
is  for  the  life  of  the  old  man  I  love  best  in  the  world.  The 
thought  of  him  has  gone  together  with  the  thought  of  my 
father  as  long  as  I  remember  the  daylight.  That  is  my  war- 
rant for  coming  to  you,  even  if  my  coming  should  have  been 
needless.  Perhaps  it  is  :  perhaps  you  have  already  determined 
that  your  power  over  the  hearts  of  men  shall  be  used  to  pre- 
vent them  from  denying  to  Florentines  a  right  which  you 
3'ourself  helped  to  earn  for  them." 

"  I  meddle  not  with  the  functions  of  the  State,  my  daugh- 
ter," said  Fra  Girolamo,  strongly  disinclined  to  re-open  exter- 
nally a  debate  which  he  had  already  gone  through  inwardly. 
"I  have  preached  and  labored  that  Florence  should  have  a 
good  government,  for  a  good  government  is  needful  to  the 
perfecting  of  the  Christian  life  ;  but  I  keep  away  my  hands 
from  particular  affairs  which  it  is  the  office  of  experienced 
citizens  to  administer." 


444  ROMOLA. 

"  Surely,  father "  —  Romola  broke  off.  She  had  uttered 
this  first  word  almost  impetuously,  but  she  was  checked  by 
the  counter-agitation  of  feeling  herself  in  an  attitude  of 
remonstrance  towards  the  man  who  had  been  the  source  of 
guidance  and  strength  to  her.  In  the  act  of  rebelling  she 
was  bruising  her  own  reverence. 

Savonarola  was  too  keen  not  to  divine  something  of  the 
conflict  that  was  arresting  her  —  too  noble,  deliberately  to 
assume  in  calm  speech  that  self-justifying  evasiveness  into 
which  he  was  often  hurried  in  public  by  the  crowding 
impulses  of  the  orator. 

"  Say  what  is  in  your  heart ;  speak  on,  my  daughter,"  he 
said,  standing  with  his  arms  laid  one  upon  the  other,  and 
looking  at  her  with  quiet  expectation. 

"  I  was  going  to  say,  father,  that  this  matter  is  surely  of 
higher  moment  than  many  about  which  I  have  heard  you 
preach  and  exhort  fervidly.  If  it  belonged  to  you  to  urge 
that  men  condemned  for  offences  against  the  State  should 
have  the  right  to  appeal  to  the  Great  Council  —  if "  — 
Romola  was  getting  eager  again  —  "  if  you  count  it  a  glory 
to  have  won  that  right  for  them,  can  it  less  belong  to  you  to 
declare  yourself  against  the  right  being  denied  to  almost  the 
lirst  men  who  need  it  ?  Surely  that  touches  the  Christian 
life  more  closely  than  whether  you  knew  beforehand  that  the 
Dauphin  would  die,  or  whether  Pisa  will  be  conquered." 

There  was  a  subtle  movement,  like  a  subdued  sign  of  pain, 
in  Savonarola's  strong  lips,  before  he  began  to  speak. 

"  My  daughter,  I  speak  as  it  is  given  me  to  speak  —  I  am 
not  master  of  the  times  when  I  may  become  the  vehicle  of 
knowledge  beyond  the  common  lights  of  men.  In  this  case 
I  have  no  illumination  bej-ond  what  wisdom  may  give  to  those 
who  are  charged  with  the  safety  of  the  State.  As  to  the  law 
of  Appeal  against  the  Six  Votes,  I  labored  to  have  it  passed 
in  order  that  no  Florentine  should  be  subject  to  loss  of  life 
and  goods  through  the  private  hatred  of  a  few  who  might 
happen  to  be  in  power ;  but  these  five  men,  who  have  desired 
to  overthrow  a  free  government  and  restore  a  corrupt  tyrant, 
have  been  condemned  with  the  assent  of  a  large  assembly  of 
their  fellow-citizens.  They  refused  at  first  to  have  their  cause 
brought  before  the  Great  Council.  They  have  lost  the  right 
to  the  appeal." 

"  How  can  they  have  lost  it  ?  "  said  Romola.  "  It  is  the 
right  to  appeal  against  condemnation,  and  they  have  never 
been  condemned  till  now  ;  and,  forgive  me,  lather,  it  is  private 


PLEADING.  445 

hatred  that  would  deny  them  the  appeal ;  it  is  the  violence  ol 
the  few  that  frightens  others;  else  why  was  the  assembly 
divided  again  directly  after  it  had  seemed  to  agree  ?  And  if 
anything  weighs  against  the  observance  of  the  law,  let  this 
weigh  for  it  —  this,  that  you  used  to  preach  more  earnestly 
than  all  else,  that  there  should  be  no  place  given  to  hatred 
and  bloodshed  because  of  these  party  strifes,  so  that  private 
ill-will  should  not  find  its  opportunities  in  public  acts.  Father, 
you  know  that  there  is  private  hatred  concerned  here  :  will  w. 
not  dishonor  you  not  to  have  interposed  on  the  side  of  mercy, 
when  there  are  many  who  hold  that  it  is  also  the  side  of  law- 
and  justice  ?  " 

"  My  daughter,"  said  Fra  Girolamo.  with  more  visible  emo- 
tion than  before,  "there  is  a  mercy  which  is  weakness,  and 
even  treason  against  the  common  good.  The  safety  of  Flor- 
ence, which  means  even  more  than  the  welfare  of  Florentines, 
now  demands  severity,  as  it  once  demanded  mercy.  It  is  not 
only  for  a  past  plot  that  these  men  are  condemned,  but  also 
for  a  plot  which  has  not  yet  been  executed ;  and  the  devices 
that  were  leading  to  its  execution  are  not  put  an  end  to :  the 
tyrant  is  still  gathering  his  forces  in  Eomagna,  and  the  ene- 
mies of  Florence,  who  sit  in  the  highest  places  of  Italy,  are 
ready  to  hurl  any  stone  that  will  crush  her." 

"  What  plot  ? "  said  Eomola,  reddening,  and  trembling 
with  alarmed  surprise. 

"  You  carry  papers  in  your  hand,  I  see,"  said  Fra  Girolamo, 
pointing  to  the  handbills.  "  One  of  them  will,  perhaps,  tell 
you  that  the  government  has  had  new  information." 

Eomola  hastily  opened  the  handbill  she  had  not  yet  read, 
and  saw  that  the  government  had  now  positive  evidence  of  a 
second  plot,  which  was  to  have  been  carried  out  in  this 
August  time.  To  her  mind  it  was  like  reading  a  confirmation 
that  Tito  had  won  his  safety  b}^  foul  means ;  his  pretence  of 
wishing  that  the  Frate  should  exert  himself  on  behalf  of  the 
condemned  only  helped  the  wretched  conviction.  She  crushed 
vip  the  paper  in  her  hand,  and,  turning  to  Savonarola,  she 
said,  with  new  passion,  "  Father,  what  safety  can  there  be  for 
Florence  when  the  worst  man  can  always  escape  ?  And," 
she  went  on,  a  sudden  flash  of  remembrance  coming  from  the 
thought  about  her  husband,  "  have  not  you  yourself  encour- 
aged this  deception  which  corrupts  the  life  of  Florence,  by 
wanting  more  favor  to  be  shown  to  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni,  Avho 
has  worn  two  faces,  and  flattered  you  with  a  show  of  affection, 
when  my  godfather  has  always  been  honest  ?     Ask  all  Flo]'- 


446  ROMOLA. 

ence  who  of  those  five  men  has  the  truest  heart,  and  there 
will  not  be  many  who  will  name  any  other  name  than  Ber- 
nardo del  Nero.  You  did  interpose  with  Francesco  Valori  for 
the  sake  of  one  prisoner  :  you  have  7wt  then  been  neutral  ; 
and  you  know  that  your  word  will  be  powerful." 

"  I  do  not  desire  the  death  of  Bernardo,"  said  Savonarola, 
coloring  deeply.  "  It  would  be  enough  if  he  were  sent  out  of 
the  city." 

"Then  why  do  you  not  speak  to  save  an  old  man  of  seventy- 
five  from  dying  a  death  of  ignominy  —  to  give  him  at  least 
the  fair  chances  of  the  law  ?  "  burst  out  Romola,  the  impetu- 
osity of  her  nature  so  roused  that  she  forgot  everything  but 
her  indignation.  "  It  is  not  that  you  feel  bound  to  be  neutral ; 
else  why  did  you  speak  for  Lorenzo  Tornabuoni  ?  You  spoke 
for  him  because  he  is  more  friendly  to  San  Marco  ;  my  god- 
father feigns  no  friendship.  It  is  not,  then,  as  a  Medicean 
that  my  godfather  is  to  die ;  it  is  as  a  man  you  have  no  love 
for ! " 

When  Romola  paused,  with  cheeks  glowing,  and  with  quiv- 
ering lips,  there  was  dead  silence.  As  she  saw  Fra  Girolamo 
standing  motionless  before  her,  she  seemed  to  herself  to  be 
hearing  her  own  words  over  again ;  words  that  in  this  echo 
of  consciousness  were  in  strange,  painful  dissonance  with  the 
memories  that  made  part  of  his  presence  to  her.  The  moments 
of  silence  were  expanded  by  gathering  compunction  and  self- 
doubt.  She  had  committed  sacrilege  in  her  passion.  And 
even  the  sense  that  she  could  retract  nothing  of  her  plea, 
that  her  mind  could  not  submit  itself  to  Savonarola's  negative, 
made  it  the  more  needful  to  her  to  satisfy  those  reverential 
memories.    With  a  sudden  movement  towards  him  she  said,  — 

"  Forgive  me,  father ;  it  is  pain  to  me  to  have  spoken  those 
words — yet  I  cannot  help  speaking.  I  am  little  and  feeble 
compared  with  you  ;  you  brought  me  light  and  strength.  But 
I  submitted  because  I  felt  the  proffered  strength  —  because  I 
saw  the  light.  Now  I  cannot  see  it.  Father,  you  yourself 
declare  that  there  comes  a  moment  when  the  soul  must  have 
no  guide  but  the  voice  within  it,  to  tell  whether  the  conse- 
crated thing  has  sacred  virtue.    And  therefore  I  must  speak." 

Savonarola  had  that  readily  roused  resentment  towards 
opposition,  hardly  separable  from  a  power-loving  and  power- 
ful nature,  accustomed  to  seek  great  ends  that  cast  a  reflected 
grandeur  on  the  means  by  which  they  are  sought.  His  ser- 
mons have  much  of  that  red  flame  in  them.  And  if  he  had 
been  a  meaner  man  his  susceptibility  might  have  shown  itself 


PLEADING.  447 

in  irritation  at  Eomola's  accusatory  freedom,  which  was  in 
strong  contrast  with  the  deference  he  habitually  received 
from  his  disciples.  But  at  this  moment  such  feelings  were 
nullified  by  that  hard  struggle  which  made  half  the  tragedy 
of  his  life — the  struggle  of  a  mind  possessed  by  a  never- 
silent  hunger  after  purity  and  simplicity,  j^et  caught  in  a 
tangle  of  egoistic  demands,  false  ideas,  and  difficult  outward 
conditions,  that  made  simplicity  impossible.  Keenly  alive  to 
all  the  suggestions  of  Eomola's  remonstrating  words,  he  was 
rapidly  surveying,  as  he  had  done  before,  the  courses  of  action 
that  were  open  to  him,  and  their  probable  results.  But  it 
was  a  question  on  which  arguments  could  seem  decisive  only 
in  proportion  as  they  were  charged  with  feeling,  and  he  had 
received  no  impulse  that  could  alter  his  bias.  He  looked  at 
Eomola,  and  said,  — 

"  You  have  full  pardon  for  your  frankness,  my  daughter. 
You  speak,  I  know,  out  of  the  fulness  of  your  family  affec- 
tions. But  these  affections  must  give  way  to  the  needs  of  the 
Eepublic.  If  those  men  who  have  a  close  acquaintance  with 
the  affairs  of  the  State  believe,  as  I  understand  they  do,  that 
the  public  safety  requires  the  extreme  punishment  of  the  law 
to  fall  on  the  five  conspirators,  I  cannot  control  their  opinion, 
seeing  that  I  stand  aloof  from  such  affairs.'' 

"  Then  you  desire  that  they  should  die  ?  You  desire  that 
the  Appeal  should  be  denied  them  ? "'  said  Eomola,  feeling 
anew  repelled  by  a  vindication  which  seemed  to  her  to  have 
the  nature  of  a  subterfuge. 

"I  have  said  that  I  do  not  desire  their  death." 

"Then,"  said  Eomola,  her  indignation  rising  again,  "you 
can  be  indifferent  that  Florentines  should  inflict  death 
which  you  do  not  desire,  when  you  might  have  protested 
against  it  —  when  you  might  have  helped  to  hinder  it,  by 
urging  the  observance  of  a  law  which  you  held  it  good  to  get 
passed.  Father,  you  used  not  to  stand  aloof :  you  used  not  to 
shrink  from  protesting.  Do  not  say  you  cannot  protest  wliere 
the  lives  of  men  are  concerned ;  say  rather,  you  desire  their 
death.  Say  rather,  you  hold  it  good  for  Florence  that  there 
shall  be  more  blood  and  more  hatred.  Will  the  death  of  five 
Mediceans  j^ut  an  end  to  parties  in  Florence  ?  Will  the  death 
of  a  noble  old  man  like  Bernardo  del  Nero  save  a  city  that 
holds  such  men  as  Dolfo  Spini  ?" 

"  My  daughter,  it  is  enough.  The  cause  of  freedom,  which 
is  the  cause  of  God's  kingdom  upon  earth,  is  often  most  in- 
jured by  the  enemies   who  carry  within  them  the   power  of 


448  ROMOLA. 

certain  human  virtues.  The  wickedest  man  is  often  not  the 
most  insurmountable  obstacle  to  the  triumph  of  good." 

"  Then  why  do  you  say  again,  that  you  do  not  desire  ray 
godfather's  death  ?  "  said  Romola,  in  mingled  anger  and  de- 
spair. "  Rather,  you  hold  it  the  more  needful  he  should  die 
because  he  is  the  better  man.  I  cannot  unravel  your  thoughts, 
father;  I  cannot  hear  the  real  voice  of  your  judgment  and 
conscience." 

There  was  a  moment's  pause.  Then  Savonarola  said,  with 
keener  emotion  than  he  had  yet  shown,  — 

"Be  thankful,  my  daughter,  if  your  own  soul  has  been 
spared  perplexity  ;  and  judge  not  those  to  whom  a  harder  lot 
has  been  given.  You  see  one  ground  of  action  in  this  matter. 
I  see  many.  I  have  to  choose  that  which  will  further  the 
work  intrusted  to  me.  The  end  I  seek  is  one  to  which  minor 
respects  must  be  sacrificed.  The  death  of  five  men  —  were 
they  less  guilty  than  these  —  is  a  light  matter  weighed 
against  the  withstanding  of  the  vicious  tyrannies  which  stifle 
the  life  of  Italy,  and  foster  the  corruption  of  the  Church ;  a 
light  matter  weighed  against  the  furthering  of  God's  king- 
dom upon  earth,  the  end  for  which  I  live  and  am  willing  my- 
self to  die." 

Under  any  other  circumstances,  Romola  would  have  been 
sensitive  to  the  appeal  at  the  beginning  of  Savonarola's 
speech ;  but  at  this  moment  she  was  so  utterly  in  antagonism 
with  him,  that  what  he  called  perplexity  seemed  to  her  soph- 
istry and  doubleness ;  and  as  he  went  on,  his  words  only  fed 
that  flame  of  indignation,  which  now  again,  more  fully  than 
ever  before,  lit  up  the  memory  of  all  his  mistakes,  and  made 
her  trust  in  him  seem  to  have  been  a  purblind  delusion.  She 
spoke  almost  with  bitterness. 

"Do  you,  then,  know  so  well  what  will  further  the  coming 
of  God's  kingdom,  father,  that  you  will  dare  to  despise  the 
plea  of  mere}' — of  justice  —  of  faithfulness  to  your  own 
teaching  ?  Has  the  French  king,  then,  brought  renovation  to 
Italy  ?  Take  care,  father,  lest  your  enemies  have  some  reason 
when  they  say,  that  in  your  visions  of  what  will  further 
God's  kingdom  you  see  only  what  will  strengthen  your  own 
party." 

"  And  that  is  true ! "  said  Savonarola,  with  flashing  eyes. 
Romola's  voice  had  seemed  to  him  in  that  moment  the  voice 
of  his  enemies.  "The  cause  of  my  party  is  the  cause  ot 
God's  kingdom." 

"  1   do    not   believe  it ! "   said    Komola,    her    whole    frame 


THE  SCAFFOLD.  449 

shaken  with  passionate  repugnance.  "  God's  kingdom  is 
something  wider  —  else,  let  me  stand  outside  it  with  the 
beings  that  I  love." 

The  two  faces  Avere  lit  up,  each  with  an  opposite  emotion, 
each  with  an  opposite  certitude.  Further  words  were  impos- 
sible. Romola  hastily  covered  her  head  and  went  out  in 
sik'nce. 


CHAPTER  LX. 

THE   SCAFFOLD. 

Three  days  later  the  moon  that  was  just  surmounting  the 
ouildings  of  the  piazza  in  front  of  the  Old  Palace  within  the 
hour  of  midnight,  did  not  make  the  usual  broad  lights  and 
shadows  on  the  pavement.  >Tot  a  hand's-breadth  of  pavement 
was  to  be  seen,  but  only  the  heads  of  an  eager  struggling 
multitude.  And  instead  of  that  background  of  silence  in 
which  the  pattering  footsteps  and  buzzing  voices,  the  lute- 
thrumming  or  rapid  scampering  of  the  many  night  wanderers 
of  Florence  stood  out  in  obtrusive  distinctness,  there  was  the 
background  of  a  roar  from  mingled  shouts  and  imprecations, 
tramplings  and  pushings,  and  accidental  clashing  of  weapons, 
across  which  nothing  was  distinguishable  but  a  darting 
shriek,  or  the  heavy  dropping  toll  of  a  bell. 

Almost  all  who  could  call  themselves  the  public  of  Florence 
were  awake  at  that  hour,  and  either  enclosed  within  the  limits 
of  that  piazza,  or  struggling  to  enter  it.  Within  the  palace 
were  still  assembled  in  the  council  chamber  all  the  chief 
magistracies,  the  eighty  members  of  the  senate,  and  the  other 
select  citizens  who  had  been  in  hot  debate  through  long  hours 
of  daylight  and  torchlight  whether  the  Appeal  should  be 
granted  or  whether  the  sentence  of  death  should  be  executed 
on  the  prisoners  forthwith,  to  forestall  the  dangerous  chances 
of  delay.  And  the  debate  had  been  so  much  like  fierce  quar- 
rel that  the  noise  from  the  council  chamber  had  reached  the 
crowd  outside.  Only  within  the  last  hour  had  the  question 
been  decided:  the  Signoria  had  remained  divided,  four  of 
them  standing  out  resolutely  for  the  Appeal  in  spite  of  the 
strong  argument  that  if  they  did  not  give  way  their  houses 
should  be  sacked,  until  Francesco  Valori,  in  brief  and  furious 
speech,  made  the  determination  of  his  party  more  ominously 


450  ROMOLA. 

distinct  by  declaring  that  if  the  Signoria  would  not  defend 
the  liberties  of  the  Florentine  people  by  executing  those  live 
perfidious  citizens,  there  would  not  be  wanting  others  Avho 
would  take  that  cause  in  hand  to  the  pei'il  of  all  who  opposed 
it.  The  Florentine  Cato  triumphed.  When  the  votes  were 
counted  again,  the  four  obstinate  white  beans  no  longer 
appeared ;  the  whole  nine  were  of  the  fatal  affirmative  black, 
deciding  the  death  of  the  five  prisoners  without  delay  —  de- 
ciding also,  only  tacitly  and  with  much  more  delay,  the  death 
of  Francesco  Valori. 

And  now,  while  the  judicial  Eight  were  gone  to  the  Bar- 
gello  to  prepare  for  the  execution,  the  five  condemned  men 
were  being  led  barefoot  and  in  irons  through  the  midst  of  the 
council.  It  was  their  friends  who  had  contrived  this :  would 
not  Florentines  be  moved  by  the  visible  association  of  such 
cruel  ignominy  with  two  venerable  men  like  Bernardo  del 
Nero  and  Niccol6  Eidolfi,  who  had  taken  their  bias  long  be- 
fore the  new  order  of  things  had  come  to  make  Mediceanism 
retrograde  —  with  two  brilliant  popular  young  men  like  Tor- 
nabuoni  and  Pucci,  whose  absence  would  be  felt  as  a  haunting 
vacancy  wherever  there  was  a  meeting  of  chief  Florentines  ? 
It  was  useless :  such  pity  as  could  be  awakened  now  was  of 
that  hopeless  sort  which  leads  not  to  rescue,  but  to  the  tardier 
action  of  revenge. 

While  this  scene  was  passing  upstairs  Romola  stood  below 
against  one  of  the  massive  pillars  in  the  court  of  the  palace, 
expecting  the  moment  when  her  godfather  would  appear,  on 
his  way  to  execution.  By  the  use  of  strong  interest  she  had 
gained  permission  to  visit  him  in  the  evening  of  this  day, 
and  remain  with  him  until  the  result  of  the  council  should  be 
determined.  And  now  she  was  waiting  with  his  confessor  to 
follow  the  guard  that  would  lead  him  to  the  Bargello.  Her 
heart  was  bent  on  clinging  to  the  presence  of  the  childless 
old  man  to  the  last  moment,  as  her  father  would  have  done ; 
and  she  had  overpowered  all  remonstrances.  Giovan  Battista 
Ridolfi,  a  disciple  of  Savonarola,  who  was  going  in  bitterness 
to  behold  the  death  of  his  elder  brother  Niccol6,  had  promised 
that  she  should  be  guarded,  and  now  stood  by  her  side. 

Tito,  too,  was  in  the  palace ;  but  Romola  had  not  seen  him. 
Since  the  evening  of  the  seventeenth  they  had  avoided  each 
other,  and  Tito  only  knew  by  inference  from  the  report  of 
the  Frate's  neutrality  that  her  pleading  had  failed.  He  was 
now  surrounded  with  official  and  other  personages,  both  Flor- 
entine and  foreign,  who  had  been  awaiting  the  issue  of  the 


THE   SCAFFOLD.  461 

long-protracted  council,  maintaining,  except  when  he  was  di- 
rectly addressed,  the  subdued  air  and  grave  silence  of  a  man 
whom  actual  events  are  placing  in  a  painful  state  of  strife 
between  public  and  private  feeling.  When  an  allusion  was 
made  to  his  wife  in  relation  to  those  events,  he  implied  that, 
owing  to  the  violent  excitement  of  her  mind,  the  mere  fact  of 
his  continuing  to  hold  office  under  a  government  concerned  in 
her  godfather's  condemnation,  roused  in  her  a  diseased  hos- 
tility towards  him  ;  so  that  for  her  sake  he  felt  it  best  not  to 
approach  her. 

"  Ah,  the  old  Bardi  blood  !  "  said  Cennini,  with  a  shrug. 
'•  I  shall  not  be  surprised  if  this  business  shakes  her  loose 
from  the  Frate,  as  well  as  some  others  I  could  name." 

"■  It  is  excusable  in  a  woman  who  if  doubtless  beautiful, 
since  she  is  the  wife  of  Messer  Tito,"  said  a  young  French 
envoy,  smiling  and  bowing  to  Tito,  "to  think  that  her  affec- 
tions must  overrule  the  good  of  the  State,  and  that  nobody  is 
to  be  beheaded  who  is  anybody's  cousin  ;  but  such  a  view  is 
not  to  be  encouraged  in  the  male  population.  It  seems  to  me 
your  Florentine  polity  is  much  weakened  by  it." 

"  That  is  true,"  said  Niccolo  Macchiavelli ;  "  but  where  per- 
sonal ties  are  strong,  the  hostilities  they  raise  must  be  taken 
due  account  of.  Many  of  these  half-way  severities  are  mere 
hot-headed  blundering.  The  only  safe  blows  to  be  inflicted 
on  men  and  parties  are  the  blows  that  are  too  heavy  to  be 
avenged." 

"  Niccolo,"  said  Cennini,  "  there  is  a  clever  wickedness  in 
thy  talk  sometimes  that  makes  me  mistrust  thy  pleasant 
young  face  as  if  it  were  a  mask  of  Satan." 

•'  Not  at  all,  my  good  Domenico."  said  Macchiavelli,  smiling, 
and  laying  his  hand  on  the  elder's  shoulder.  "  Satan  was  a 
blunderer,  an  introducer  of  novita,  who  made  a  stupendous 
failure.  If  he  had  succeeded,  we  should  all  have  been  wor- 
shipping him,  and  his  portrait  would  have  been  more  flattered." 

"Well,  well,"  said  Cennini,  "I  say  not  thy  doctrine  is  not 
too  clever  for  Satan :  I  only  say  it  is  wicked  enough  for  him." 

"  I  tell  you,"  said  Macchiavelli,  •'  my  doctrine  is  the  doe- 
trine  of  all  men  who  seek  an  end  a  little  farther  off  than  their 
own  noses.  Ask  our  Frate,  our  prophet,  how  his  universal 
renovation  is  to  be  brought  about :  he  will  tell  you,  first,  by 
getting  a  free  and  pure  government ;  and  since  it  appears  that 
this  cannot  be  done  by  making  all  Florentines  love  each  other, 
it  must  be  done  by  cutting  off  every  head  that  happens  to  be  ob- 
stinately in  the  way.     Only  if  a  man  incurs  odium  by  sanction- 


452  ROMOLA. 

ing  a  severity  that  is  not  thorough  enough  to  be  final,  he  commits 
a  blunder.  And  something  like  that  blunder,  I  suspect,  the 
Frate  has  committed.  It  was  an  occasion  on  which  he  might 
have  won  some  lustre  by  exerting  himself  to  maintain  the 
Appeal ;  instead  of  that,  he  has  lost  lustre,  and  has  gained  no 
strength." 

Before  any  one  else  could  speak,  there  came  the  expected 
announcement  that  the  prisoners  were  about  to  leave  the 
council  chamber ;  and  the  majority  of  those  who  were  present 
hurried  towards  the  door,  intent  on  securing  the  freest  pas- 
sage to  the  Bargello  in  the  rear  of  the  prisoners'  guard ;  for 
the  scene  of  the  execution  was  one  that  drew  alike  those  who 
were  moved  by  the  deepest  passions  and  those  who  were 
moved  by  the  coldest  curiosity. 

Tito  was  one  of  those  who  remained  behind.  He  had  a 
native  repugnance  to  sights  of  death  and  pain,  and  five  days 
ago  whenever  he  had  thought  of  this  execution  as  a  possibility 
he  had  hoped  that  it  would  not  take  place,  and  that  the  ut- 
most sentence  would  be  exile  :  his  own  safety  demanded  no 
more.  But  now  he  felt  that  it  would  be  a  welcome  guarantee 
of  his  security  when  he  had  learned  that  Bernardo  del  Nero's 
head  was  off  the  shoulders.  The  new  knowledge  and  new 
attitude  towards  him  disclosed  by  Eomola  on  the  day  of  his 
return,  had  given  him  a  new  dread  of  the  power  she  possessed 
to  make  his  position  insecure.  If  any  act  of  hers  only  suc- 
ceeded in  making  him  an  object  of  suspicion  and  odium,  he 
foresaw  not  only  frustration,  but  frustration  under  unpleasant 
circumstances.  Her  belief  in  Baldassarre  had  clearly  de- 
termined her  wavering  feelings  against  further  submission, 
and  if  her  godfather  lived  she  would  win  him  to  share  her  be- 
lief without  much  trouble.  Eomola  seemed  more  than  ever 
an  unmanageable  fact  in  his  destiny.  But  if  Bernardo  del 
Nero  were  dead,  the  difficulties  that  would  beset  her  in  plac- 
ing herself  in  opposition  to  her  husband  would  probably  be  in- 
surmountable to  her  shrinking  pride.  Therefore  Tito  had  felt 
easier  when  he  knew  that  the  Eight  had  gone  to  the  Bargello  to 
order  the  instant  erection  of  the  scaffold.  Four  other  men  — 
his  intimates  and  confederates  —  were  to  die,  besides  Bernardo 
del  Nero.  But  a  man's  own  safety  is  a  god  that  sometimes 
makes  very  grim  demands.  Tito  felt  them  to  be  grim  :  even 
in  the  pursuit  of  what  was  agreeable,  this  paradoxical  life 
forced  upon  him  the  desire  for  what  was  disagreeable.  But 
lie  had  had  other  experience  of  this  sort,  and  as  he  heard 
through  the  open  doorway  the  shuffle  of  many  feet  and  the 


THE  SCAFFOLD.  453 

clanking  of  metal  on  the  stairs,  he  was  able  to  answer  the 
questions  of  the  young  French  envoy  without  showing  signs 
of  any  other  feeling  than  that  of  sad  resignation  to  State 
necessities. 

Those  sounds  fell  on  Romola  as  if  her  power  of  hearing 
had  been  exalted  along  with  every  other  sensibility  of  her 
nature.  She  needed  no  arm  to  support  her ;  she  shed  no  tears. 
She  felt  that  intensity  of  life  which  seems  to  transcend  both 
grief  and  joy — in  which  the  mind  seems  to  itself  akin  to 
elder  forces  that  wrought  out  existence  before  the  birth  of 
pleasure  and  pain.  Since  her  godfather's  fate  had  been  de- 
cided, the  previous  struggle  of  feeling  in  her  had  given  way 
to  an  identification  of  herself  with  him  in  these  supreme  mo- 
ments :  she  was  inwardly  asserting  for  him  that,  if  he  suf- 
fered the  punishment  of  treason,  he  did  not  deserve  the  name 
of  traitor ;  he  was  the  victim  to  a  collision  between  two  kinds 
of  faithfulness.  It  was  not  given  him  to  die  for  the  noblest 
cause,  and  yet  he  died  because  of  his  nobleness.  He  might 
have  been  a  meaner  man  and  found  it  easier  not  to  incur  this 
guilt.  Romola  was  feeling  the  full  force  of  that  sympathy 
with  the  individual  lot  that  is  continually  opposing  itself  to 
the  formulae  by  which  actions  and  parties  are  judged.  She 
was  treading  the  way  with  her  second  father  to  the  scaffold. 
and  nerving  herself  to  defy  ignominy  by  the  consciousness 
that  it  was  not  deserved. 

The  way  was  fenced  in  by  three  hundred  armed  men,  who 
had  been  placed  as  a  guard  by  the  orders  of  Francesco  Valori, 
for  among  the  apparent  contradictions  that  belonged  to  this 
event,  not  the  least  striking  was  the  alleged  alarm  on  the  one 
hand  at  the  popular  rage  against  the  conspirators,  and  the 
alleged  alarm  on  the  other  lest  there  should  be  an  attempt  to 
rescue  them  in  the  midst  of  a  hostile  crowd.  When  the}"  had 
arrived  within  the  court  of  the  Bargello,  Romola  was  allowed 
to  approach  Bernardo  with  his  confessor  for  a  moment  of  fare- 
well. Many  eyes  were  bent  on  them  even  in  that  struggle  of 
an  agitated  throng,  as  the  aged  man,  forgetting  that  his 
hands  were  bound  with  irons,  lifted  them  towards  the  golden 
head  that  was  bent  towards  him,  and  then,  checking  that 
movement,  leaned  to  kiss  her.  She  seized  the  fettered  hands 
that  were  hung  down  again,  and  kissed  them  as  if  they  had 
been  sacred  things. 

"My  poor  Romola,"  said  Bernardo,  in  a  low  voice,  "I  have 
only  to  die,  but  thou  hast  to  live  —  and  I  si i all  not  be  there 
to  help  thee." 


454  ROM  OLA. 

"Yes,"  said  Romola  hurriedly,  "you  iviWhel^^  lue  —  always 
—  because  I  shall  remember  you." 

She  was  taken  away  and  conducted  up  the  flight  of  steps 
that  led  to  the  loggia  surrounding  the  grand  old  court.  She 
took  her  place  there,  determined  to  look  till  the  moment  when 
her  godfather  laid  his  head  on  the  block.  Now  while  the 
prisoners  were  allowed  a  brief  interval  with  their  confessor, 
the  spectators  were  pressing  into  court  until  the  crowd  be- 
came dense  around  the  black  scaffold,  and  the  torches  fixed  in 
iron  rings  against  the  pillars  threw  a  varying  startling  light 
at  one  moment  on  passionless  stone  carvings,  at  another  on 
some  pale  face  agitated  with  suppressed  rage  or  suppressed 
grief  —  the  face  of  one  among  the  many  near  relatives  of  the 
condemned,  who  were  presently  to  receive  their  dead  and  carry 
them  home. 

Romola's  face  looked  like  a  marble  image  against  the  dark 
arch  as  she  stood  watching  for  the  moment  when  her  god- 
father would  appear  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold.  He  was  to 
suffer  first,  and  Battista  Ridolfi,  who  was  by  her  side,  had 
promised  to  take  her  away  through  a  door  behind  them  when 
she  would  have  seen  the  last  look  of  the  man  who  alone  in  all 
the  world  had  shared  her  pitying  love  for  her  father.  And 
still,  in  the  background  of  her  thought,  there  was  the  possi- 
bility striving  to  be  a  hope,  that  some  rescue  might  yet  come, 
something  that  would  keep  that  scaffold  unstained  by  blood. 

For  a  long  while  there  was  constant  movement,  lights 
flickering,  heads  swaying  to  and  fro,  confused  voices  within 
the  court,  rushing  waves  of  sound  through  the  entrance  from 
without.  It  seemed  to  Romola  as  if  she  were  in  the  midst  of 
a  storm-troubled  sea,  caring  nothing  about  the  storm,  caring 
only  to  hold  out  a  signal  till  the  eyes  that  looked  for  it  could 
seek  it  no  more. 

Suddenly  there  was  stillness,  and  the  very  tapers  seemed 
to  tremble  into  quiet.  The  executioner  was  ready  on  the 
scaffold,  and  Bernardo  del  Nero  was  seen  ascending  it  with  a 
slow  firm  step.  Romola  made  no  visible  movement,  uttered 
not  even  a  suppressed  sound :  she  stood  more  firmly,  caring 
for  his  firmness.  She  saw  him  pause,  saw  the  white  head 
kept  erect,  while  he  said,  in  a  voice  distinctly  audible,  — 

"  It  is  but  a  short  space  of  life  that  my  fellow-citizens  have 
taken  from  me." 

She  perceived  that  he  was  gazing  slowly  round  him  as  he 
spoke.  She  felt  that  his  eyes  were  resting  on  her,  and  that 
she  was  stretching  out  her  arms  towards  him.     Then  she  saw 


V' 


DRIFTING  AWAY.  455 

no  more  till  —  a  long  while  after,  as  it  seemed  —  a  voice  said, 

''  My  daughter,  all  is  peace  now.     I  can  conduct  you  to  your 

house." 

She  uncovered  her  head  and  saw  her  godfather's  confessor 

standing  by  her,  in  a  room  where  there  were  other  grave  men 

talking  in  subdued  tones. 

''  I  am  read}^,"  she  said,  starting  up.    "Let  us  lose  no  time." 
She  thought  all  clinging  was  at  an  end  for  her :   all   her 

strength  now  should  be  given  to  escape  from  a  grasp  under 

which  she  shuddered. 


CHAPTER   LXI. 

DRIFTING    AWAY. 

On  the  eighth  day  from  that  memorable  night  Romola  was 
standing  on  the  brink  of  the  Mediterranean,  watching  the 
gentle  summer  pulse  of  the  sea  just  above  what  was  then  the 
little  fishing  village  of  Viareggio. 

Again  she  had  fled  from  Florence,  and  this  time  no  arrest- 
ing voice  had  called  her  back.  Again  she  wore  the  gray 
religious  dress ;  and  this  time,  in  her  heart-sickness,  she  did 
not  care  that  it  was  a  disguise.  A  new  rebellion  had  risen 
within  her,  a  new  despair.  Why  should  she  care  about 
wearing  one  badge  more  than  another,  or  about  being  called 
by  her  own  name  ?  She  despaired  of  finding  any  consistent 
duty  belonging  to  that  name.  What  force  was  there  to  create 
for  her  that  supremely  hallowed  motive  which  men  call  duty, 
but  which  can  have  no  inward  constraining  existence  save 
through  some  form  of  believing  love  ? 

The  bonds  of  all  strong  affection  were  snapped.  In  her 
marriage,  the  highest  bond  of  all,  she  had  ceased  to  see  the 
mystic  union  which  is  its  own  guarantee  of  indissolubleness, 
had  ceased  even  to  see  the  obligation  of  a  voluntary  pledge  : 
had  she  not  proved  that  the  things  to  which  she  had  pledged 
herself  were  impossible  ?  The  impulse  to  set  herself  free 
had  risen  again  with  overmastering  force ;  yet  the  freedom 
could  only  be  an  exchange  of  calamity.  There  is  no  compen- 
sation for  the  woman  who  feels  that  the  chief  relation  of  her 
life  has  been  no  more  than  a  mistake.  She  has  lost  her 
crown.  The  deepest  secret  of  human  blessedness  has  half 
whispered  itself  to  her,  and  then  forever  passed  her  by. 


456  ROM  OLA. 

And  now  Romola's  best  support  under  that  supreme 
woman's  sorrow  had  slipped  away  from  her.  The  vision  of 
any  great  purpose,  any  end  of  existence  which  could  ennoble 
endurance  and  exalt  the  common  deeds  of  a  dusty  life  with 
divine  ardors,  was  utterly  eclipsed  for  her  now  by  the  sense 
of  a  confusion  in  human  things  which  made  all  effort  a  mere 
dragging  at  tangled  threads ;  all  fellowship,  either  for  resist- 
ance or  advocacy,  mere  unfairness  and  exclusiveness.  What, 
after  all,  was  the  man  who  had  represented  for  her  the 
highest  heroism :  the  heroism  not  of  hard,  self-contained 
endurance,  but  of  willing,  self-offering  love  ?  What  was  the 
cause  he  was  struggling  for  ?  Romola  had  lost  her  trust  in 
Savonarola,  had  lost  that  fervor  of  admiration  which  had 
made  her  unmindful  of  his  aberrations,  and  attentive  only  to 
the  grand  curve  of  his  orbit.  And  now  that  her  keen  feeling 
for  her  godfather  had  thrown  her  into  antagonism  with  the 
Frate,  she  saw  all  the  repulsive  and  inconsistent  details  in 
his  teaching  with  a  painful  lucidity  which  exaggerated  their 
proportions.  In  the  bitterness  of  her  disappointment  she 
said  that  his  striving  after  the  renovation  of  the  Church  and 
the  world  was  a  striving  after  a  mere  name  which  told  no 
more  than  the  title  of  a  book :  a  name  that  had  come  to  mean 
practically  the  measures  that  would  strengthen  his  own 
position  in  Florence;  nay,  often  questionable  deeds  and 
words,  for  the  sake  of  saving  his  influence  from  suffering  by 
his  own  errors.  And  that  political  reform  which  had  once 
made  a  new  interest  in  her  life  seemed  now  to  reduce  itself 
to  narrow  devices  for  the  safety  of  Florence,  in  contemptible 
contradiction  with  the  alternating  professions  of  blind  trust 
in  the  Divine  care. 

It  was  inevitable  that  she  should  judge  the  Frate  unfairly 
on  a  question  of  individual  suffering,  at  which  she  looked 
with  the  eyes  of  personal  tenderness,  and  lie  with  the  eyes  of 
theoretic  conviction.  In  that  declaration  of  his,  that  tlie 
cause  of  his  party  was  the  cause  of  God's  kingdom,  she  heard 
only  the  ring  of  egoism.  Perhaps  such  words  have  rarely 
been  uttered  without  that  meaner  ring  in  them ;  yet  they  are 
the  implicit  formula  of  all  energetic  belief.  And  if  such 
energetic  belief,  pursuing  a  grand  and  remote  end,  is  often  in 
danger  of  becoming  a  demon-worship,  in  which  the  votary 
lets  his  son  and  daughter  pass  through  the  fire  with  a  readi- 
ness that  hardly  looks  like  sacrifice ;  tender  fellow-feeling  for 
the  nearest  has  its  danger  too,  and  is  apt  to  be  timid  and 
sceptical  towards  the  larger  aims  Avithout  which  life  cannot 


DRIFTING  AWAY.  467 

rise    into    religion.      In    this  way  poor    Romola   v/as    being 
blinded  by  her  tears. 

No  one  who  has  ever  known  what  it  is  thus  to  lose  faith  in 
a  fellow-man  whom  he  has  profoundly  loved  and  reverenced, 
will  lightly  say  that  the  shock  oan  leave  the  faith  in  the 
Invisible  Goodness  unshaken.  With  the  sinking  of  high 
human  trust,  the  dignity  of  life  sinks  too ;  we  cease  to  believe 
in  our  own  better  self,  since  that  also  is  part  of  the  common 
nature  which  is  degraded  in  our  thought ;  and  all  the  finer 
impulses  of  the  soul  are  dulled.  Romola  felt  even  the  springs 
of  her  once  active  pity  drying  up,  and  leaving  her  to  barren 
egoistic  complaining.  Had  not  she  had  her  sorrows  too  ? 
And  few  had  cared  for  her,  while  she  had  cared  for  many. 
She  had  done  enough ;  she  had  striven  r.fter  the  impossible, 
and  was  weary  of  this  stifling  crowded  life.  She  longed  for 
that  repose  in  mere  sensation  which  she  had  sometimes 
dreamed  of  in  the  sultry  afternoons  of  her  early  girlhood, 
when  she  had  fancied  herself  floating  naiad-like  in  the  waters. 

The  clear  waves  seemed  to  invite  her :  she  wished  she 
could  lie  down  to  sleep  on  them  and  pass  from  sleep  into 
death.  But  Romola  could  not  directly  seek  death ;  the  fulness 
of  young  life  in  her  forbade  that.  She  could  only  wish  that 
death  would  come. 

At  the  spot  where  she  had  paused  there  was  a  deep  bend  in 
the  shore,  and  a  small  boat  with  a  sail  was  moored  there.  In 
her  longing  to  glide  over  the  waters  that  were  getting  golden 
with  the  level  sun-rays,  she  thought  of  a  story  which  had 
been  one  of  the  things  she  had  loved  to  dwell  on  in  Boccaccio, 
when  her  father  fell  asleep  and  she  glided  from  her  stool  to 
sit  on  the  floor  and  read  the  "  Decamerone."  It  was  the 
story  of  that  fair  Gostanza  who  in  her  love-lornness  desired 
to  live  no  longer,  but  not  having  the  courage  to  attack  her 
young  life,  had  put  herself  into  a  boat  and  pushed  off  to 
sea;  then,  lying  down  in  the  boat,  had  wrapped  her  mantle 
round  her  head,  hoping  to  be  wrecked,  so  that  her  fear 
would  be  helpless  to  flee  from  death.  The  memory  had 
remained  a  mere  thought  in  Romola's  mind,  without  budding 
into  any  distinct  wish ;  but  now,  as  she  paused  again  in  her 
walking  to  and  fro,  she  saw  gliding  black  against  the  red  gold 
another  boat  with  one  man  in  it,  making  towards  the  bend 
where  the  first  and  smaller  boat  was  moored.  Walking  on 
again,  she  at  length  saw  the  man  land,  pull  his  boat  ashore 
and  begin  to  unlade  something  from  it.  He  was  perhaps  the 
owner  of  the  smaller  boat  also  :  he  would  be  going  away  soon, 


458  ROMOLA, 

and  her  opportunity  would  be  gone  with  him  —  her  oppor- 
tunity of  buying  that  smaller  boat.  She  had  not  yet  admitted 
to  herself  that  she  meant  to  use  it,  but  she  felt  a  sudden 
eagerness  to  secure  the  possibility  of  using  it,  which  disclosed 
the  half-unconscious  growth  of  a  thought  into  a  desire. 

"  Is  that  little  boat  yours  also  ?  "  she  said  to  the  fisherman, 
who  had  looked  up,  a  little  startled  by  the  tall  gray  figure, 
and  had  made  a  reverence  to  this  holy  Sister  wandering  thus 
mysteriously  in  the  evening  solitude. 

It  was  his  boat ;  an  old  one,  hardly  seaworthy,  yet  worth 
repairing  to  any  man  who  would  buy  it.  By  the  blessing  of 
San  Antonio,  whose  chapel  was  in  the  village  yonder,  his 
fishing  had  prospered,  and  he  had  now  a  better  boat,  which 
had  once  been  Gianni's  who  died.  But  he  had  not  yet  sold 
the  old  one.  Romola  asked  him  how  much  it  was  worth,  and 
then,  while  he  was  busy,  thrust  the  price  into  a  little  satchel 
lying  on  the  ground  and  containing  the  remnant  of  his  dinner. 
After  that,  she  watched  him  furling  his  sail  and  asked  him 
how  he  should  set  it  if  he  wanted  to  go  out  to  sea,  and  then 
pacing  up  and  down  again,  waited  to  see  him  depart. 

The  imagination  of  herself  gliding  away  in  that  boat  on  the 
darkening  waters  was  grooving  more  and  more  into  a  longing, 
as  the  thought  of  a  cool  brook  in  sultriness  becomes  a  painful 
thirst.  To  be  freed  from  the  burden  of  choice  when  all 
motive  was  bruised,  to  commit  herself,  sleeping,  to  destiny 
which  would  either  bring  death  or  else  new  necessities  that 
might  rouse  a  new  life  in  her  !  — it  was  a  thought  that  beck- 
oned her  the  more  because  the  soft  evening  air  made  her  long 
to  rest  in  the  still  solitude,  instead  of  going  back  to  the  noise 
and  heat  of  the  village. 

At  last  the  slow  fisherman  had  gathered  up  all  his  movables 
and  was  walking  away.  Soon  the  gold  was  shrinking  and  get- 
ting duskier  in  sea  and  sky,  and  there  was  no  living  thing  in 
sight,  no  sound  but  the  lulling  monotony  of  the  lapping 
waves.  In  this  sea  there  was  no  tide  that  would  help  to  carry 
her  away  if  she  waited  for  its  ebb ;  but  Eomola  thought  the 
breeze  from  the  land  was  rising  a  little.  She  got  into  the 
boat,  unfurled  the  sail,  and  fastened  it  as  she  had  learned  in  that 
first  brief  lesson.  She  saw  that  it  caught  the  light  breeze,  and 
this  was  all  she  cared  for.  Then  she  loosed  the  boat  from  its 
moorings,  and  tried  to  urge  it  with  an  oar,  till  she  was  far  out 
from  the  land,  till  the  sea  was  dark  even  to  the  west,  and  the 
stars  were  disclosing  themselves  like  a  paljjitating  life  over 
the  wide  heavens.     Kesting  at  last,  she  threw  back  her  cowl, 


THE  BENEDICTION.  459 

and,  taking  off  the  kerchief  underneath,  which  confined  her 
hair,  she  doubled  them  both  under  her  head  for  a  pillow  on  one 
of  the  boat's  ribs.  The  fair  head  was  still  very  young  and 
could  bear  a  hard  pillow. 

And  so  she  lay,  with  the  soft  night  air  breathing  on  her 
while  she  glided  on  the  water  and  watched  the  deepening 
quiet  of  the  sky.  She  was  alone  now  :  she  had  freed  herself 
from  all  claims,  she  had  freed  herself  even  from  that  burden 
of  choice  which  presses  with  heavier  and  heavier  weight  when 
claims  have  loosed  their  guiding  hold. 

Had  she  found  anything  like  the  dream  of  her  girlhood  ? 
No.  Memories  hung  upon  her  like  the  weight  of  broken 
wings  that  could  never  be  lifted — memories  of  human  sympa- 
thy which  even  in  its  pains  leaves  a  thirst  that  the  Great 
Mother  has  no  milk  to  still.  Romola  felt  orj)haned  in  those 
wide  spaces  of  sea  and  sk3^  She  read  no  message  of  love  for 
her  in  that  far-off  symbolic  writing  of  the  heavens,  and  with 
a  great  sob  she  wished  that  she  might  be  gliding  into 
death. 

She  drew  the  cowl  over  her  head  again  and  covered  her 
face,  choosing  darkness  rather  than  the  light  of  the  stars, 
which  seemed  to  her  like  the  hard  light  of  eyes  that  looked  at 
her  without  seeing  her.  Presently  she  felt  that  she  was  in  the 
grave,  but  not  resting  there  :  she  was  touching  the  hands 
of  the  beloved  dead  beside  her,  and  trying  to  wake  them. 


CHAPTER   LXII. 

THE    BENEDICTION. 

About  ten  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  twenty-seventh  of 
February  the  currents  of  passengers  along  the  Florentine 
streets  set  decidedly  towards  San  Marco.  It  was  the  last 
morning  of  the  Carnival,  and  every  one  knew  there  was  a 
second  Bonfire  of  Vanities  being  prepared  in  front  of  the  Old 
Palace ;  but  at  this  hour  it  was  evident  that  the  centre  of  pop- 
ular interest  lay  elsewhere. 

The  Piazza  di  San  Marco  was  filled  by  a  multitude  who 
showed  no  other  movement  than  that  which  proceeded  from 
the  pressure  of  new-comers  trying  to  force  their  way  forward 
from  all  the  openings  :  but  the  front  ranks  were  already  close- 


460  ROMOLA. 

serried  and  resisted  the  pressure.  Those  ranks  were  ranged 
around  a  semicircular  barrier  in  front  of  the  church,  and 
within  this  barrier  were  already  assembling  the  Dominican 
Brethren  of  San  Marco. 

But  the  temporary  wooden  pulpit  erected  over  the  church- 
door  was  still  empty.  It  was  presently  to  be  entered  by  the 
man  whom  the  Pope's  command  had  banished  from  the  pulpit 
of  the  Duomo,  whom  the  other  ecclesiastics  of  Florence  had 
been  forbidden  to  consort  with,  whom  the  citizens  had  been 
forbidden  to  hear  on  pain  of  excommunication.  This  man  had 
said,  "  A  wicked,  unbelieving  Pope  who  has  gained  the  ponti- 
fical chair  by  bribery  is  not  Christ's  Vicar.  His  curses  are 
broken  swords  :  he  grasps  a  hilt  without  a  blade.  His  com- 
mands are  contrary  to  the  Christian  life :  it  is  lawful  to  dis- 
obey them  —  nay,  it  is  not  lawful  to  obey  themP  And  the  peo- 
ple still  flocked  to  hear  him  as  he  preached  in  his  own  church  of 
San  Marco,  though  the  Pope  was  hanging  terrible  threats  over 
Florence  if  it  did  not  renounce  the  pestilential  schismatic  and 
send  him  to  Rome  to  be  "  converted  "  —  still,  as  on  this  ver}'' 
morning,  accepted  the  Communion  from  his  excommunicated 
hands.  For  how  if  this  Frate  had  really  more  command  over 
the  Divine  lightnings  than  that  official  successor  of  Saint 
Peter  ?  It  was  a  momentous  question,  which  for  the  mass  of 
citizens  could  never  be  decided  by  the  Frate's  ultimate  test, 
namely,  what  was  and  what  was  not  accordant  with  the  high- 
est spiritual  law.  No  :  in  such  a  case  as  this,  if  God  had 
chosen  the  Frate  as  his  prophet  to  rebuke  the  High  Priest 
who  carried  the  mystic  raiment  unworthily,  he  would  attest 
his  choice  by  some  unmistakable  sign.  As  long  as  the  belief 
in  the  Prophet  carried  no  threat  of  outward  calamity,  but 
rather  the  confident  hope  of  exceptional  safety,  no  sign  was 
needed  :  his  preaching  was  a  music  to  which  the  people  felt 
themselves  marching  along  the  way  they  wished  to  go ;  but 
now  that  belief  meant  an  immediate  blow  to  their  commerce, 
the  shaking  of  their  position  among  the  Italian  States,  and  an 
interdict  on  their  city,  there  inevitably  came  the  question, 
'•  What  miracle  showest  thou  ?  "  Slowly  at  first,  then  faster 
and  faster,  that  fatal  demand  had  been  swelling  in  Savonarola's 
ear,  provoking  a  response,  outwardly  in  the  declaration  that  at 
the  fitting  time  the  miracle  would  come ;  inwardly  in  the 
faith  —  not  unwavering,  for  what  faith  is  so?  —  that  if  the 
need  for  miracle  became  urgent,  tlie  work  he  had  before  him 
was  too  great  for  the  Divine  power  to  leave  it  halting.  His 
faith  wavered,  but  not  his  speech :  it  is  the  lot  of  every  man 


THE  BENEDICTION.  461 

who  lias  to  speak  for  the  satisfaction  of  the' crowd,  that  he 
must  often  speak  in  virtue  of  yesterda3''s  faith,  hoping  it  will 
come  back  to-morrow. 

It  was  in  preparation  for  a  scene  which  was  really  a 
response  to  the  popular  impatience  for  some  supernatural 
guarantee  of  the  Prophet's  mission,  that  the  wooden  pulpit 
had  been  erected  above  the  church-door.  But  while  the  ordi- 
nary Frati  in  black  mantles  were  entering  and  arranging  them- 
selves, the  faces  of  the  multitude  were  not  yet  eagerly  dii*ected 
towards  the  pulpit:  it  was  felt  that  Savonarola  would  not 
appear  just  yet,  and  there  was  some  interest  in  singling  out 
the  various  monks,  some  of  them  belonging  to  high  Florentine 
families,  many  of  them  having  fathers,  brothers,  or  cousins 
among  the  artisans  and  shopkeepers  who  made  the  majority  of 
the  crowd.  It  was  not  till  the  tale  of  monks  was  complete, 
not  till  they  had  fluttered  their  books  and  had  begun  to  chant, 
that  people  said  to  each  other,  "  Fra  Girolamo  must  be  coming 
now." 

That  expectation  rather  than  any  spell  from  the  accustomed 
wail  of  psalmody  was  what  made  silence  and  expectation  seem 
to  spread  like  a  paling  solemn  light  over  the  multitude  of 
upturned  faces,  all  now  directed  towards  the  empty  pulpit. 

The  next  instant  the  pulpit  was  no  longer  empty.  A  figure 
covered  from  head  to  foot  in  black  cowl  and  mantle  had  entered 
it,  and  was  kneeling  with  bent  head  and  with  face  turned 
away.  It  seemed  a  weary  time  to  the  eager  people  while  the 
black  figure  knelt  and  the  monks  chanted.  But  the  stillness 
was  not  broken,  for  the  Frate's  audiences  with  Heaven  were 
yet  charged  with  electric  awe  for  that  mixed  multitude,  so  that 
those  who  had  already  the  will  to  stone  him  felt  their  arms 
unnerved. 

At  last  there  was  a  vibration  among  the  multitude,  each 
seeming  to  give  his  neighbor  a  momentary  aspen-like  touch,  as 
when  men  who  have  been  watching  for  something  in  the  heav- 
ens see  the  expected  presence  silently  disclosing  itself.  The 
Frate  had  risen,  turned  towards  the  people,  and  partly  pushed 
back  his  cowl.  The  monotonous  wail  of  psalmod}^  had  ceased, 
and  to  those  who  stood  near  the  pulpit,  it  was  as  if  the  sounds 
which  had  just  been  filling  their  ears  had  suddenly  merged 
themselves  in  the  force  of  Savonarola's  flashing  glance,  as  he 
looked  round  him  in  the  silence.  Then  he  stretched  out  his 
hands,  which,  in  their  exquisite  delicacy,  seemed  transfigured 
from  an  animal  organ  for  grasping  into  vehicles  of  sensibility 
too  acute  to  need  any  gross  contact :  hands  that  came  like  an 


462  ROMOLA. 

appealing  speech  from  that  part  of  his  soul  which  was  masked 
by  his  strong  passionate  face,  written  on  now  with  deeper  lines 
about  the  mouth  and  brow  than  are  made  by  forty-four  years 
of  ordinary  life. 

At  the  first  stretching  out  of  the  hands  some  of  the  crowd 
in  the  front  ranks  fell  on  their  knees,  and  here  and  there  a 
devout  disciple  farther  off;  but  the  great  majority  stood  firm, 
some  resisting  the  impulse  to  kneel  before  this  excommunicated 
man  (might  not  a  great  judgment  fall  upon  him  even  in  this 
act  of  blessing  ?)  —  others  jarred  with  scorn  and  hatred  of  the 
ambitious  deceiver  who  was  getting  up  this  new  comedy,  before 
which,  nevertheless,  they  felt  themselves  impotent,  as  before 
the  triumph  of  a  fashion. 

But  then  came  the  voice,  clear  and  low  at  first,  uttering  the 
words  of  absolution  —  " Misercatiir  vestri^'  —  and  more  fell  on 
their  knees :  and  as  it  rose  higher  and  yet  clearer,  the  erect 
heads  became  fewer  and  fewer,  till,  at  the  words  "  Benedicat 
cos  omnipotens  Deiis,''  it  rose  to  a  masculine  cry,  as  if  protest- 
ing its  power  to  bless  under  the  clutch  of  a  demon  that  wanted 
to  stifle  it :  it  rang  like  a  trumpet  to  the  extremities  of  the 
Piazza,  and  under  it  every  head  was  bowed. 

After  the  utterance  of  that  blessing,  Savonarola  himself 
fell  on  his  knees  and  hid  his  face  in  temporary  exhaustion. 
Those  great  jets  of  emotion  were  a  necessary  part  of  his  life  ; 
he  himself  had  said  to  the  people  long  ago,  "  Without  preach- 
ing I  cannot  live."     But  it  was  a  life  that  shattered  him. 

In  a  few  minutes  more,  some  had  risen  to  their  feet,  but  a 
larger  number  remained  kneeling,  and  all  faces  were  intently 
watching  him.  He  had  taken  into  his  hands  a  crystal  vessel, 
containing  the  consecrated  Host,  and  was  about  to  address  the 
people. 

"You  remember,  my  children,  three  days  ago  I  besought 
you,  when  I  should  hold  this  Sacrament  in  my  hand  in  the  face 
of  you  all,  to  pray  fervently  to  the  Most  High  that  if  this 
work  of  mine  does  not  come  from  Him,  He  will  send  a  fire  and 
consume  me,  that  I  may  vanish  into  the  eternal  darkness  away 
from  His  light  which  I  have  hidden  with  my  falsity.  Again 
I  beseech  you  to  make  that  prayer,  and  to  make  it  note." 

It  was  a  breathless  moment :  perhaps  no  man  really  prayed, 
if  some  in  a  spirit  of  devout  obedience  made  the  effort  to 
pray.  Every  consciousness  was  chiefly  possessed  by  the  sense 
that  Savonarola  was  praying,  in  a  voice  not  loud,  but  distinctly 
audible  in  the  wide  stillness. 

''Lord,  if  I  have  not  wrought  in  sincerity  of  soul,  if  my 


THE  BENEDICTION.  463 

word  Cometh  not  from  Thee,  strike  me  in  this  moment  with 
Thy  thunder,  and  let  the  fires  of  Thy  wrath  enclose  me." 

He  ceased  to  speak,  and  stood  motionless,  with  the  conse- 
crated Mystery  in  his  hand,  with  eyes  uplifted  and  a  quivering 
excitement  in  his  whole  aspect.  Every  one  else  was  motionless 
and  silent  too,  while  the  sunlight,  which  for  the  last  quarter 
of  an  hour  had  here  and  there  been  piercing  the  grayness, 
made  fitful  streaks  across  the  convent  wall,  causing  some  awe- 
stricken  spectators  to  start  timidly.  But  soon  there  was  a 
wider  parting,  and  with  a  gentle  quickness,  like  a  smile,  a 
stream  of  brightness  poured  itself  on  the  crystal  vase,  and 
then  spread  itself  over  Savonarola's  face  with  mild  glorification. 

An  instantaneous  shout  rang  through  the  Piazza,  "  Behold 
the  answer ! " 

The  warm  radiance  thrilled  through  Savonarola's  frame,  and 
so  did  the  shout.  It  was  his  last  moment  of  untroubled 
triumph,  and  in  its  rapturous  confidence  he  felt  carried  to  a 
grander  scene  yet  to  come,  before  an  audience  that  would 
represent  all  Christendom,  in  whose  presence  he  should  again 
be  sealed  as  the  messenger  of  the  supreme  righteousness,  and 
feel  himself  full  charged  with  Divine  strength.  It  was  but  a 
moment  that  expanded  itself  in  that  prevision.  While  the 
shout  was  still  ringing  in  his  ears  he  turned  away  within  the 
church,  feeling  the  strain  too  great  for  him  to  bear  it  longer. 

But  when  the  Frate  had  disappeared,  and  the  sunlight 
seemed  no  longer  to  have  anything  special  in  its  illumination, 
but  was  spreading  itself  impartially  over  all  things  clean  and 
unclean,  there  began,  along  with  the  general  movement  of  the 
crowd,  a  confusion  of  voices  in  which  certain  strong  discords 
and  varying  scales  of  laughter  made  it  evident  that,  in  the 
previous  silence  and  universal  kneeling,  hostility  and  scorn 
had  only  submitted   unwillingly  to  a  momentary  spell. 

"  It  seems  to  me  the  plaudits  are  giving  wa}^  to  criticism," 
said  Tito,  who  had  been  watching  the  scene  attentively  from 
an  upper  loggia  in  one  of  the  houses  opposite  the  church. 
''  Nevertheless  it  was  a  striking  moment,  eh,  Messer  Pietro  ? 
Fra  Girolamo  is  a  man  to  make  one  understand  that  there  was 
a  time  when  the  monk's  frock  was  a  symbol  of  power  over 
men's  minds  rather  than  over  the  keys  of  women's  cupboards." 

"  Assuredly,"  said  Pietro  Cennini.  "  And  until  I  have  seen 
proof  that  Fra  Girolamo  has  much  less  faith  in  God's  judg- 
ments than  the  common  run  of  men,  instead  of  having  consid- 
erably more,  I  shall  not  believe  that  he  would  brave  Heaven 
in  this  way  if  his  soul  were  laden  with  a  conscious  lie." 


464  ROM  OLA. 


CHAPTER   LXIII. 

RIPENING    SCHEMES. 

A  MONTH  after  that  Carnival,  one  morning  near  the  end  of 
March,  Tito  descended  the  marble  steps  of  the  Old  Palace, 
bound  on  a  pregnant  errand  to  San  Marco.  For  some  reason, 
he  did  not  choose  to  take  the  direct  road,  which  was  but  a 
slightly  bent  line  from  the  Old  Palace ;  he  chose  rather  to 
make  a  circuit  by  the  Piazza  di  Santa  Croce,  where  the  people 
would  be  pouring  out  of  the  church  after  the  early  sermon. 

It  was  in  the  grand  church  of  Santa  Croce  that  the  daily 
Lenten  sermon  had  of  late  had  the  largest  audience.  For 
Savonarola's  voice  had  ceased  to  be  heard  even  in  his  own 
church  of  San  Marco,  a  hostile  Signoria  having  imposed 
silence  on  him  in  obedience  to  a  new  letter  from  the  Pope, 
threatening  the  city  with  an  immediate  interdict  if  this 
"■  wretched  worm  "  and  "  monstrous  idol "  were  not  forbidden 
to  preach,  and  sent  to  demand  pardon  at  Rome.  And  next  to 
hearing  Fra  Girolamo  himself,  the  'most  exciting  Lenten 
occupation  was  to  hear  him  argued  against  and  vilified.  This 
excitement  was  to  be  had  in  Santa  Croce,  where  the  Franciscan 
appointed  to  preach  the  Quaresimal  sermons  had  offered  to 
clinch  his  arguments  by  walking  through  the  fire  with  Fra 
Girolamo.  Had  not  that  schismatical  Dominican  said,  that 
his  prophetic  doctrine  would  be  proved  by  a  miracle  at  the 
fitting  time  ?  Here,  then,  was  the  fitting  time.  Let  Savon- 
arola walk  through  the  fire,  and  if  he  came  out  unhurt,  the 
Divine  origin  of  his  doctrine  would  be  demonstrated  ;  but  if 
the  fire  consumed  him,  his  falsity  would  be  manifest ;  and  that 
he  might  have  no  excuse  for  evading  the  test,  the  Franciscan 
declared  himself  willing  to  be  a  victim  to  this  high  logic,  and 
to  be  burned  for  the  sake  of  securing  the  necessary  minor 
premise. 

Savonarola,  according  to  his  habit,  had  taken  no  notice  of 
these  pulpit  attacks.  But  it  happened  that  the  zealous 
preacher  of  Santa  Croce  was  no  other  than  the  Fra  Francesco 
di  Puglia,  who  at  Prato  the  year  before  had  been  engaged  in  a 
like  challenge  with  Savonarola's  fervent  follower  Fra  Domenico, 


INTERIOR    OF   THE    CHURCH    OF    SANTA    CROCE. 


RIPENING  SCHEMES.  465 

but  had  been  called  home  by  his  superiors  while  the  heat  was 
simply  oratorical.  Honest  Fra  Domenico,  then,  who  was 
preaching  Lenten  sermons  to  the  women  in  the  Via  del  Coco- 
mero.  no  sooner  heard  of  this  new  challenge,  than  he  took  up 
the  gauntlet  for  his  master,  and  declared  himself  ready  to  walk 
through  the  tire  with  Fra  Francesco.  Already  the  people  were 
beginning  to  take  a  strong  interest  in  what  seemed  to  them  a 
short  and  easy  method  of  argument  (for  those  who  were  to 
be  convinced),  when  Savonarola,  keenly  alive  to  the  dangers 
that  lay  in  the  mere  discussion  of  the  case,  commanded  Fra 
Domenico  to  withdraw  his  acceptance  of  the  challenge  and 
secede  from  the  affair.  The  Franciscan  declared  himself  con- 
tent :  he  had  not  directed  his  challenge  to  any  subaltern,  but 
to  Fra  Girolamo  himself. 

After  that,  the  popular  interest  in  the  Lenten  sermons  had 
flagged  a  little.  But  this  morning,  when  Tito  entered  the 
Piazza  di  Santa  Croce,  he  found,  as  he  expected,  that  the 
people  were  pouring  from  the  church  in  large  numbers.  In- 
stead of  dispersing,  many  of  them  concentrated  themselves 
towards  a  particular  spot  near  the  entrance  of  the  Franciscan 
monastery,  and  Tito  took  the  same  direction,  threading  the 
crowd  with  a  careless  and  leisurely  air,  but  keeping  careful 
watch  on  that  monastic  entrance,  as  if  he  expected  some  object 
of  interest  to  issue  from  it. 

It  was  no  such  expectation  that  occupied  the  crowd.  The 
object  they  were  caring  about  was  already  visible  to  them  in 
the  shape  of  a  large  placard,  affixed  by  order  of  the  Signoria, 
and  covered  with  very  legible  official  handwriting.  But  curi- 
osity was  somewhat  balked  by  the  fact  that  tlie  manuscript 
was  chiefly  in  Latin,  and  though  nearly  every  man  knew 
beforehand  approximately  what  the  placard  contained,  he  had 
an  appetite  for  more  exact  knowledge,  which  gave  him  an  irri- 
tating sense  of  his  neighbor's  ignorance  in  not  being  able  to 
interpret  the  learned  tongue.  For  that  aural  acquaintance 
with  Latin  phrases  which  the  unlearned  might  pick  up  from 
pulpit  quotations  constantly  interpreted  by  the  preacher  could 
help  them  little  when  they  saw  written  Latin ;  the  spelling 
even  of  the  modern  language  being  in  an  unorganized  and 
scrambling  condition  for  the  mass  of  people  who  could  read 
and  write,^  while  the  majority  of  those  assembled  nearest  to 
the  placard  were  not  in  the  dangerous  predicament  of  possess- 
ing that  little  knowledge. 

>  The  old  diarists  throw  in  their  consonants  with  a  regard  rather  to  quantity  than 

fosition,  well  typified  by  the  Ragnolo  Bragliiello  (Agnolo  Gabriello)  of  Boccaccio's 
erondo. 


466  ROMOLA. 

"  It's  the  Frate's  doctrines  that  he's  to  prove  by  being 
burned,"  said  that  large  public  character  Goro,  who  happened 
to  be  among  the  foremost  gazers.  "  The  Signoria  has  taken 
it  in  hand,  and  the  writing  is  to  let  us  know.  It's  what  the 
Padre  has  been  telling  us  about  in  his  sermon." 

"  Nay,  Goro,"  said  a  sleek  shopkeeper,  compassionatel}^ 
"  thou  hast  got  thy  legs  into  twisted  hose  there.  The  Frate 
has  to  prove  his  doctrines  by  not  being  burned :  he  is  to  walk 
through  the  fire,  and  come  out  on  the  other  side  sound  and 
whole." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  a  young  sculptor,  who  wore  his  white- 
streaked  cap  and  tunic  with  a  jaunty  air.  "  But  Fra  Girolamo 
objects  to  walking  through  the  fire.  Being  sound  and  whole 
already,  he  sees  no  reason  why  he  should  walk  through  the 
fire  to  come  out  in  just  the  same  condition.  He  leaves  such 
odds  and  ends  of  work  to  Fra  Domenico." 

"Then  I  say  he  flinches  like  a  coward,"  said  Goro.  in  a 
wheezy  treble.  "  Suffocation  I  that  was  what  he  did  at  the 
Carnival.  He  had  us  all  in  the  Piazza  to  see  the  lightning 
strike  him,  and  nothing  came  of  it." 

"  Stop  that  bleating,"  said  a  tall  shoemaker,  who  had  stepped 
in  to  hear  part  of  the  sermon,  with  bunches  of  slippers  hang- 
ing over  his  shoulders.  "  It  seems  to  me,  friend,  that  you  are 
about  as  wise  as  a  calf  with  water  on  its  brain.  The  Frate 
will  flinch  from  nothing :  he'll  say  nothing  beforehand,  per- 
haps, but  when  the  moment  comes  he'll  walk  through  the  fire 
without  asking  any  gray-frock  to  keep  him  company.  But  I 
would  give  a  shoe-string  to  know  what  this  Latin  all  is." 

''There's  so  much  of  it,"  said  the  shopkeeper,  ''else  I"m 
pretty  good  at  guessing.  Is  there  no  scholar  to  be  seen  ?  "  lie 
added  with  a  slight  expression  of  disgust. 

There  was  a  general  turning  of  heads,  which  caused  the 
talkers  to  descry  Tito  approaching  in  their  rear. 

"  Here  is  one,"  said  the  young  sculptor,  smiling  and  rais- 
ing his  cap. 

"  It  is  the  secretary  of  the  Ten  :  he  is  going  to  the  convent, 
doubtless  ;  make  way  for  him,"  said  the  shopkeeper,  also  doff- 
ing, though  that  mark  of  respect  was  rarely  shown  by  Flor- 
entines except  to  the  highest  officials.  The  exceptional  rever- 
ence was  really  exacted  by  the  splendor  and  grace  of  Tito's 
appearance,  which  made  his  black  mantle,  with  its  gold  fibula, 
look  like  a  regal  robe,  and  his  ordinary  black  velvet  cap  like 
an  entirely  exceptional  head-dress.  The  hardening  of  his 
cheeks  and  mouth,  which  was   the   chief  change   in  liis  face 


RIPENING   SCHEMES.  467 

since  he  came  to  ^Florence,  seemed  to  a  superficial  glance  only 
to  give  his  beauty  a  more  masculine  character.  He  raised  his 
own  cap  immediately  and  said,  — 

"  Thanks,  my  friend,  I  merely  wished,  as  you  did,  to  see 
what  is  at  the  foot  of  this  placard  —  ah,  it  is  as  I  expected. 
I  had  been  informed  that  the  government  permits  any  one 
who  will,  to  subscribe  his  name  as  a  candidate  to  enter  the 
tire  —  which  is  an  act  of  liberality  worthy  of  the  magnificent 
Signoria — reserving  of  course  the  right  to  make  a  selection. 
And  doubtless  many  believers  will  be  eager  to  subscribe  their 
names.  For  what  is  it  to  enter  the  fire,  to  one  whose  faith  is 
firm  ?  A  man  is  afraid  of  the  fire,  because  he  believes  it  will 
burn  him ;  but  if  he  believes  the  contrary  ?  "'  —  here  Tito 
lifted  his  shoulders  and  made  an  oratorical  pause  — "  for 
which  reason  I  have  never  been  one  to  disbelieve  the  Frate, 
when  he  has  said  that  he  would  enter  the  fire  to  prove  his  doc- 
trine. For  in  his  place,  if  you  believed  the  fire  would  not 
burn  you,  which  of  you,  my  friends,  would  not  enter  it  as 
readily  as  you  would  walk  along  the  dry  bed  of  the  Mugnone  ?  " 

As  Tito  looked  round  him  during  this  appeal,  there  was  a 
change  in  some  of  his  audience  very  much  like  the  change  in 
an  eager  dog  when  he  is  invited  to  smell  something  pungent. 
Since  the  question  of  burning  was  becoming  practical,  it  was 
not  every  one  who  would  rashly  commit  himself  to  any  gen- 
eral view  of  the  relation  between  faith  and  fire.  The  scene 
might  have  been  too  much  for  a  gravity  less  under  command 
than  Tito's. 

"  Then,  Messer  Segretario,"  said  the  young  sculptor,  "  it 
seems  to  me  Fra  Francesco  is  the  greater  hero,  for  he  offers 
to  enter  the  fire  for  the  truth,  though  he  is  sui-e  the  fire  will 
burn  him." 

"  I  do  not  deny  it,"  said  Tito  blandly.  "  But  if  it  turns  out 
that  Fra  Francesco  is  mistaken,  he  will  have  been  burned  for 
the  wrong  side,  and  the  Church  has  never  reckoned  such  vic- 
tims to  be  martyrs.  We  must  suspend  our  judgment  until  the 
trial  has  really  taken  place.'' 

"  It  is  true,  Messer  Segretario,"  said  the  shopkeeper,  with 
subdued  impatience.  "  But  will  you  favor  us  by  interpreting 
the  Latin  ?  " 

"  Assuredly,"  said  Tito.  '•  It  does  but  express  the  conclu- 
sions or  doctrines  which  the  Frate  specially  teaches,  and  which 
the  trial  by  fire  is  to  prove  true  or  false.  They  are  doubtless 
familiar  to  you.     First,  that  Florence  "  — 

"Let  us  have  the  Latin  bit  by  bit,  and  then  tell  us  what  it 


468  ROMOLA. 

means,"  said  the  shoemaker,  who  had  been  a  frequent  hearer 
of  Fra  Girolamo. 

"  Willingly,"  said  Tito,  smiling.  ''  You  will  then  judge  if  1 
give  you  the  right  meaning." 

"  Yes,  yes  ;  that's  fair,"  said  Goro. 

^' Ecclesia  Dei  indiget  renovatione ;  that  is,  the  Church  of 
God  needs  purifying  or  regenerating." 

"  It  is  true,"  said  several  voices  at  once. 

"  That  means,  the  priests  ought  to  lead  better  lives ;  there 
needs  no  miracle  to  prove  that.  That's  what  the  Frate  has 
always  been  saying,"  said  the  shoemaker. 

^^ FlagellahlUir,^^  Tito  went  on.  "That  is,  it  will  be 
scourged.  Renovahltur :  it  will  be  purified.  Florentia  quoque 
postfiagellam  renovabitur  et  pros2)erabiUir :  Florence  also,  after 
the  scourging,  shall  be  purified  and  shall  prosper." 

"  That  means  we  are  to  get  Pisa  again,"  said  the  shopkeeper. 

"  And  get  the  wool  from  England  as  we  used  to  do,  I  should 
hope,"  said  an  elderly  man,  in  an  old-fashioned  berretta,  who 
had  been  silent  till  now.  "There's  been  scourging  enough 
with  the  sinking  of  the  trade." 

At  this  moment,  a  tall  personage,  surmounted  by  a  red 
feather,  issued  from  the  door  of  the  convent,  and  exchanged 
an  indifferent  glance  Avith  Tito  ;  who,  tossing  his  becchetto 
carelessly  over  his  left  shoulder,  turned  to  his  reading  again, 
while  the  bystanders,  with  more  timidity  than  respect,  shrank 
to  make  a  passage  for  Messer  Dolfo  Spini. 

'■'' Infideles  convertentur  ad  Christum,''^  Tito  went  on.  "  That 
is,  the  infidels  shall  be  converted  to  Christ." 

"  Those  are  the  Turks  and  the  Moors.  Well,  I've  nothing  to 
say  against  that,"  said  the  shopkeeper,  dispassionately. 

"  Hmc  autem  ovinia  erunt  temporihiis  iiostris :  and  all  these 
things  shall  happen  in  our  times." 

"  Why,  what  use  would  they  be  else  ?  "  said  Goro. 

"'  Excommunicatio  nuper  lata  contra  Keverendxim  Patrem  nos- 
trum Fratrem  Hieronymum  nulla  est :  the  excommunication 
lately  pronounced  against  our  reverend  father,  Fra  Girolamo, 
is  null.  Non  ohservantes  earn  nan  peccant :  those  who  disre- 
gard it  are  not  committing  a  sin." 

"  I  shall  know  better  what  to  say  to  that  when  we  have  had 
the  Trial  by  Fire,"  said  the  shopkeeper. 

"Which  doubtless  will  clear  up  everything,"  said  Tito. 
"  That  is  all  the  Latin — all  the  conclusions  that  are  to  be 
proved  true  or  false  by  the  trial.  The  rest  you  can  perceive 
is  simply  a  proclamation  of  the  Signoria  in  good  Tuscan,  call- 


^ 


RIPENING  SCHEMES.  469 

ing  on  such  as  are  eager  to  walk  through  the  fire,  to  come 
to  the  Palazzo  and  subscribe  their  names.  Can  I  serve  you 
further?     If  not"  — 

Tito,  as  he  turned  away,  raised  his  cap  and  bent  slightly, 
with  so  easy  an  air  that  the  movement  seemed  a  natural 
prompting  of  deference. 

He  quickened  his  pace  as  he  left  the  Piazza,  and  after  two 
or  three  turnings  he  paused  in  a  quiet  street  before  a  door  at 
which  he  gave  a  light  and  peculiar  knock.  It  was  opened  by 
a  young  woman  whom  he  chucked  under  the  chin  as  he  asked 
her  if  the  Padrone  was  within,  and  he  then  passed,  without 
further  ceremony,  through  another  door  which  stood  ajar  on 
his  right  hand.  It  admitted  him  into  a  handsome  but  untidy 
room,  where  Dolfo  Spini  sat  playing  with  a  fine  stag-hound 
which  alternately  snuffed  at  a  basket  of  pups  and  licked  his 
hands  with  that  affectionate  disregard  of  her  master's  morals 
sometimes  held  to  be  one  of  the  most  agreeable  attributes  of 
her  sex.  He  just  looked  up  as  Tito  entered,  but  continued  his 
play,  simply  from  that  disposition  to  persistence  in  some  irre-- 
levant  action,  by  which  slow-witted  sensual  people  seem  to 
be  continually  counteracting  their  own  purposes.  Tito  was 
patient. 

'•'  A  handsome  bracca  that,"  he  said,  quietly,  standing  with 
his  thumbs  in  his  belt.  Presently  he  added,  in  that  cool 
liquid  tone  which  seemed  mild,  but  compelled  attention, 
"  When  you  have  finished  such  caresses  as  cannot  possibly  be 
deferred,  my  Dolfo,  we  will  talk  of  business,  if  you  please. 
My  time,  which  I  could  wish  to  be  eternity  at  your  service,  is 
not  entirely  my  own  this  morning." 

"  Down,  Mischief,  down  !  "  said  Spini,  with  sudden  rough- 
ness. "  Malediction  I  "  he  added,  still  more  gruffly,  pushing 
the  dog  aside ;  then,  starting  from  his  seat,  he  stood  close  to 
Tito,  and  put  a  hand  on  his  shoulder  as  he  spoke. 

"  I  hope  your  sharp  wits  see  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  this 
business,  my  fine  necromancer,  for  it  seems  to  me  no  clearer 
than  the  bottom  of  a  sack." 

''  What  is  your  difficulty,  my  cavalier  ?  " 

"  These  accursed  Frati  Minori  at  Santa  Croce.  They  are 
drawing  back  now.  Fra  Francesco  himself  seems  afraid  of 
sticking  to  his  challenge ;  talks  of  the  Prophet  being  likely 
to  use  magic  to  get  up  a  false  miracle  —  thinks  he  himself 
might  be  dragged  into  the  fire  and  burned,  and  the  Prophet 
might  come  out  whole  by  magic,  and  the  Church  be  none  the 
better.    And  then,  after  all  our  talking,  there's  not  so  much  as  a 


470  ROMOLA. 

blessed  lay  brother  who  will  offer  himself  to  pair  with  that 
pious  sheep  Fra  Domenico." 

"  It  is  the  peculiar  stupidity  of  the  tonsured  skull  that  pro- 
vents  them  from  seeing  of  how  little  consequence  it  is  whether 
they  are  burned  or  not,"  said  Tito.  "  Have  you  sworn  well  to 
them  that  they  shall  be  in  no  danger  of  entering  the  fire  ?  " 

"  j^o,"  said  Spini,  looking  puzzled ;  '•'  because  one  of  them 
will  be  obliged  to  go  in  with  Fra  Domenico,  who  thinks  it  a 
thousand  years  till  the  fagots  are  ready." 

"  Not  at  all.  Fra  Domenico  himself  is  not  likely  to  go  in. 
I  have  told  you  before,  my  Dolfo,  only  your  powerful  mind  is 
not  to  be  impressed  without  more  repetition  than  suffices  for 
the  vulgar  —  I  have  told  you  that  now  you  have  got  the  Sig- 
noria  to  take  up  this  affair  and  prevent  it  from  being  hushed 
up  by  Fra  Girolamo,  nothing  is  necessary  but  that  on  a  given 
day  the  fuel  should  be  prepared  in  the  Piazza,  and  the  people 
got  together  with  the  expectation  of  seeing  something  pro- 
digious. If,  after  that,  the  Propliet  quits  the  Piazza  without 
any  appearance  of  a  miracle  on  his  side,  he  is  ruined  with  the 
people :  thej''  Avill  be  ready  to  pelt  him  out  of  the  city,  the 
Signoria  Avill  find  it  easy  to  banish  him  from  the  territory,  and 
his  Holiness  may  do  as  he  likes  with  him.  Therefore,  my 
Alcibiades,  swear  to  the  Franciscans  that  their  gray  frocks 
shall  not  come  within  singeing  distance  of  the  fire." 

Spini  rubbed  the  back  of  his  head  with  one  hand,  and 
tapped  his  sword  against  his  leg  with  the  other,  to  stimulate  his 
power  of  seeing  these  intangible  combinations. 

'•But,"  he  said  presently,  looking  up  again,  "unless  we  fall 
on  him  in  the  Piazza,  when  the  people  are  in  a  rage,  and  make 
an  end  of  him  and  his  lies  then  and  there,  Valori  and  the 
Salviati  and  the  Albizzi  will  take  up  arms  and  raise  a  fight  for 
him.  I  know  that  was  talked  of  when  there  was  the  hubbub 
on  Ascension  Sunday.  And  the  people  may  turn  round  again : 
there  may  be  a  story  raised  of  the  French  king  coming  again, 
or  some  other  cursed  chance  in  the  hypocrite's  favor.  The  city 
will  never  be  safe  till  he's  out  of  it." 

"  He  rvill  be  out  of  it  before  long,  without  your  giving  your- 
self any  further  trouble  than  this  little  comedy  of  the  Trial 
by  Fire.  The  wine  and  the  sun  will  make  vinegar  without 
any  shouting  to  help  them,  as  your  Florentine  sages  would 
say.  You  will  have  the  satisfaction  of  delivering  your  city 
from  an  incubus  by  an  able  stratagem,  instead  of  risking  blun- 
ders with  sword-thrusts." 

"But  suppose  he  did  get  magic  and  the  devil   to  help  him, 


RIPENING  SCHEMES.  471 

and  walk  through  the  fire  after  all  ?  "  said  Spini,  with  a  gri- 
mace  intended  to  hide  a  certain  shyness  in  trenching  on  this 
speculative  ground.  "How  do  you  know  there's  nothing  in 
those  things  ?  Plenty  of  scholars  believe  in  them,  and  this 
Frate  is  bad  enough  for  anything." 

"  Oh,  of  course  there  are  such  things,"  said  Tito,  with  a 
shrug:  "but  I  have  particular  reasons  for  knowing  that  the 
Frate  is  not  on  such  terms  with  the  devil  as  can  give  him  any 
confidence  in  this  affair.  The  only  magic  he  relies  on  is  his 
own  ability." 

"  Ability  !  "  said  Spini.  "  Do  you  call  it  ability  to  be  setting: 
Florence  at  loggerheads  with  the  Pope  and  all  the  powers  of 
Italy  —  all  to  keep  beckoning  at  the  French  king  who  never 
comes  ?  You  may  call  him  able,  but  I  call  him  a  hypocrite, 
who  wants  to  be  master  of  everybody,  and  get  himself  made 
Pope." 

"You  judge  with  your  usual  penetration,  ray  captain,  but 
our  opinions  do  not  clash.  The  Frate,  wanting  to  be  master, 
and  to  carry  out  his  projects  against  the  Pope,  requires  the 
lever  of  a  foreign  power,  and  requires  Florence  as  a  fulcrum. 
I  used  to  think  him  a  narrow-minded  bigot,  but  now  I  think 
him  a  shrewd  ambitious  man  who  knows  what  he  is  aiming  at, 
and  directs  his  aim  as  skilfully  as  you  direct  a  ball  when  you 
are  playing  at  maglio." 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  Spini,  cordially,  "I  can  aim  a  ball." 

"  It  is  true."  said  Tito,  with  bland  gravity  :  "  and  I  should 
not  have  troubled  you  with  my  trivial  remark  on  the  Frate's 
ability,  but  that  you  may  see  how  this  will  heighten  the  credit 
of  your  success  against  him  at  Rome  and  at  Milan,  which  is 
sure  to  serve  you  in  good  stead  when  the  city  comes  to  change 
its  policy." 

"  Well,  thou  art  a  good  little  demon,  and  shalt  have  good 
pay,"  said  Spini,  patronizingly;  whereupon  he  thought  it  only 
natural  that  the  useful  Greek  adventurer  should  smile  with 
gratification  as  he  said, — 

"Of  course,  any  advantage  to  me  depends  entirely  on 
your " — 

"  We  shall  have  our  supper  at  my  palace  to-night,"  inter- 
rupted Spini,  with  a  significant  nod  and  an  affectionate  pat  on 
Tito's  shoulder,  "  and  I  shall  expound  the  new  scheme  to  them 
all." 

"  Pardon,  my  magnificent  patron,"  said  Tito ;  "  the  scheme 
has  been  the  same  from  the  first  —  it  has  never  varied  except 
in  your  memory.     Are  you  sure  you  have  fast  hold  of  it  now  ?  " 


472  ROMOLA. 

Spiui  rehearsed. 

"  One  thing  more,"  he  said,  as  Tito  was  hastening  away. 
"  There  is  that  sharp-nosed  notary,  Ser  Ceccone  ;  he  has  been 
handy  of  late.  Tell  me,  you  who  can  see  a  man  wink  when 
you're  behind  him,  do  you  think  I  may  go  on  making  use  of 
him  ?  " 

Tito  dared  not  say  "  No."  He  knew  his  companion  too 
well  to  trust  him  with  advice  when  all  Spini's  vanity  and  self- 
interest  were  not  engaged  in  concealing  the  adviser. 

"Doubtless,'' he  answered  promptly.  '"I  have  nothing  to 
say  against  Ceccone." 

That  suggestion  of  the  notary's  intimate  access  to  Spini 
caused  Tito  a  passing  twinge,  interrupting  his  amused  satis- 
faction in  the  success  with  which  he  made  a  tool  of  the  man 
who  fancied  himself  a  patron.  For  he  had  been  rather  afraid 
of  Ser  Ceccone.  Tito's  nature  made  him  peculiarly  alive 
to  circumstances  that  might  be  turned  to  his  disadvan- 
tage ;  his  memory  was  much  haunted  by  such  possibilities, 
stimulating  him  to  contrivances  by  which  he  might  ward 
them  off.  And  it  was  not  likely  that  he  should  forget  that 
October  morning  more  than  a  year  ago,  when  Romola  had 
appeared  suddenly  before  him  at  the  door  of  Nello's  shop,  and 
had  compelled  him  to  declare  his  certainty  that  Fra  Girolamo 
was  not  going  outside  the  gates.  The  fact  that  Ser  Ceccone 
had  been  a  witness  of  that  scene,  together  with  Tito's  percep- 
tion that  for  some  reason  or  other  he  was  an  object  of  dislike 
to  the  notary,  had  received  a  new  importance  from  the  recent 
turn  of  events.  For  after  having  been  implicated  in  the 
Medicean  plots,  and  having  found  it  advisable  in  consequence 
to  retire  into  the  country  for  some  time,  Ser  Ceccone  had  of 
late,  since  his  re-appearance  in  the  city,  attached  himself  to 
the  Arrabbiati,  and  cultivated  the  patronage  of  Dolfo  Spini. 
Now  that  captain  of  the  Compagnacci  was  much  given,  when 
in  the  company  of  intimates,  to  confidential  narrative  about  his 
own  doings,  and  if  Ser  Ceccoue's  powers  of  combination  were 
sharpened  by  enmity,  he  might  gather  some  knowledge  which 
lie  could  use  against  Tito  with  very  unpleasant  results. 

It  would  be  pitiable  to  be  balked  in  well-conducted  schemes 
by  an  insignificant  notary ;  to  be  lamed  by  the  sting  of  an 
insect  whom  he  had  offended  unawares.  ''  But,"  Tito  said  to 
himself,  "  the  man's  dislike  to  me  can  be  nothing  deeper  than 
the  ill-humor  of  a  dinnerless  dog  ;  T  shall  conquer  it  if  I  con 
make  him  prosperous."  And  he  had  been  very  glad  of  an 
opportunity    wliich   had   presented    itself   of    providing    the 


V 


RIPENING   SCHEMES.  473 

notary  with  a  temporary  post  as  an  extra  cancelUere  or 
registering  secretary  under  the  Ten,  believing  that  with  this 
sop  and  the  expectation  of  more,  the  waspish  cur  must  be 
quite  cured  of  the  disposition  to  bite  him. 

But  perfect  scheming  demands  omniscience,  and  the  notary's 
envy  had  been  stimulated  into  hatred  by  causes  of  which  Tito 
knew  nothing.  That  evening,  when  Tito,  returning  from  his 
critical  audience  with  the  Special  Council,  had  brushed  by 
8er  Ceccone  on  the  stairs,  the  notary,  who  had  only  just 
returned  from  Pistoja,  and  learned  the  arrest  of  the  con- 
spirators, was  bound  on  an  errand  which  bore  a  humble 
resemblance  to  Tito's.  He  also,  without  giving  up  a  show  of 
popular  zeal,  had  been  putting  in  the  Medicean  lottery.  He 
also  had  been  privy  to  the  unexecuted  plot,  and  was  willing 
to  tell  what  he  knew,  but  knew  much  less  to  tell.  He  also 
would  have  been  willing  to  go  on  treacherous  errands,  but  a 
more  eligible  agent  had  forestalled  him.  His  propositions 
were  received  coldly ;  the  council,  he  was  told,  was  already  in 
possession  of  the  needed  information,  and  since  he  had  been 
thus  busy  in  sedition,  it  would  be  well  for  him  to  retire  out 
of  the  way  of  mischief,  otherwise  the  government  might  be 
obliged  to  take  note  of  him.  Ser  Ceccone  wanted  no  evi- 
dence to  make  him  attribute  his  failure  to  Tito,  and  his 
spite  was  the  more  bitter  because  the  nature  of  the  case 
compelled  him  to  hold  his  peace  about  it.  Nor  was  this  the 
whole  of  his  grudge  against  the  flourishing  Melema.  On 
issuing  from  his  hiding-place,  and  attaching  himself  to  the 
Arrabbiati,  he  had  earned  some  pay  as  one  of  the  spies  who 
reported  information  on  Florentine  affairs  to  the  Milanese 
court ;  but  his  pay  had  been  small,  notwithstanding  his  pains 
to  write  full  letters,  and  he  had  lately  been  apprised  that  his 
news  was  seldom  more  than  a  late  and  imperfect  edition  of 
what  was  known  already.  Now  Ser  Ceccone  had  no  positive 
knowledge  that  Tito  had  an  underhand  connection  with  the 
Arrabbiati  and  the  Court  of  Milan,  but  he  had  a  suspicion  of 
which  he  chewed  the  cud  with  as  strong  a  sense  of  flavor  as  if 
it  had  been  a  certainty. 

This  fine-grown  vigorous  hatred  could  swallow  the  feeble 
opiate  of  Tito's  favors,  and  be  as  lively  as  ever  after  it.  Why 
should  Ser  Ceccone  like  Melema  any  the  better  for  doing  him 
favors  ?  Doubtless  the  suave  secretary  had  his  own  ends  to 
serve  ;  and  what  right  had  he  to  the  superior  position  which 
made  it  possible  for  him  to  show  favor  ?  But  since  he  had 
tuned  his  voice  to  flattery,  Ser  Ceccone  would  pitch  his  in  the 


474  ROMOLA. 

same  key,  and  it  remained  to  be  seen  who  would  win  at  th;^ 
game  of  outwitting. 

To  have  a  miud  well  oiled  with  that  sort  of  argument 
which  prevents  any  claim  from  grasping  it,  seems  eminently 
convenient  sometimes ;  only  the  oil  becomes  objectionable 
when  we  find  it  anointing  other  minds  on  which  we  want  to 
establish  a  hold. 

Tito,  however,  not  being  quite  omniscient,  felt  now  no 
more  than  a  passing  twinge  of  uneasiness  at  the  suggestion  of 
Ser  Ceccone's  power  to  hurt  him.  It  was  only  for  a  little 
while  that  he  cared  greatly  about  keeping  clear  of  suspicions 
and  hostility.  He  was  now  playing  his  final  game  in 
Florence,  and  the  skill  he  was  conscious  of  applying  gave 
him  a  pleasure  in  it  even  apart  from  the  expected  winnings. 
The  errand  on  which  he  was  bent  to  San  Marco  was  a  stroke 
in  which  he  felt  so  much  confidence  that  he  had  already  given 
notice  to  the  Ten  of  his  desire  to  resign  his  office  at  an  indefi- 
nite period  within  the  next  month  or  two,  and  had  obtained 
permission  to  make  that  resignation  suddenly,  if  his  affairs 
needed  it,  with  the  understanding  that  Niccolo  ]\Iacchiavelli 
was  to  be  his  provisional  substitute,  if  not  his  successor.  He 
was  acting  on  hypothetic  grounds,  but  this  was  the  sort  of 
action  that  had  the  keenest  interest  for  his  diplomatic  mind. 
From  a  combination  of  general  knowledge  concerning  Savona- 
rola's purposes  with  diligently  observed  details  he  had  framed 
a  conjecture  which  he  was  about  to  verify  by  this  visit  to  San 
Marco.  If  he  proved  to  be  right,  his  game  would  be  won, 
and  he  might  soon  turn  his  back  on  Florence.  He  looked 
eagerly  towards  that  consummation,  for  many  circumstances 
besides  his  own  weariness  of  the  place  told  him  that  it  was 
time  for  him  to  be  gone. 


CHAPTER   LXIV. 

THE     PROPHET     IN     HIS     CKLL. 

Tito's  visit  to  San  Marco  had  been  announced  beforehand, 
and  he  was  at  once  conducted  by  Fra  Xiccol6,  Savonarola's 
secretary,  up  the  spiral  staircase  into  the  long  corridors  lined 
with  cells  —  corridors  where  Fra  Angelico's  frescos,  delicate 
as  the  rainbow  on  the  melting  cloud,  startled  the  unaccus- 
tomed eye  here  and  there,  as  if  they  had  been  sudden  reflec- 


SAVONAROLA'S    CELL. 


THE  PROPHET  IX  HIS   CELL.  476 

tions  cast  from  an  ethereal  world,  where  the  Madonna  sat 
crowned  in  her  radiant  glory,  and  the  Divine  infant  looked 
forth  with  perpetnal  promise. 

It  was  an  hour  of  relaxation  in  the  monastery,  and  most  of 
the  cells  were  empty.  The  light  through  the  narrow  windows 
looked  in  on  nothing  but  bare  walls,  and  the  hard  pallet  and 
the  crucifix.  And  even  behind  that  door  at  the  end  of  a  long 
corridor,  in  the  inner  cell  opening  from  an  ante-chamber 
where  the  Prior  usually  sat  at  his  desk  or  received  private 
visitors,  the  high  jet  of  light  fell  on  only  one  more  object 
that  looked  quite  as  common  a  monastic  sight  as  the  bare 
walls  and  hard  pallet.  It  was  but  the  back  of  a  figure  in  the 
long  white  Dominican  tunic  and  scapulary,  kneeling  with 
bowed  head  before  a  crucifix.  It  might  have  been  any  ordi- 
nary Fra  Girolamo,  who  had  nothing  worse  to  confess  than 
thinking  of  wrong  things  when  he  was  singing  171  coro,  or 
feeling  a  spiteful  joy  when  Fra  Benedetto  dropped  the  ink 
over  his  own  miniatures  in  the  breviary  he  was  illuminating 
—  who  had  no  higher  thought  than  that  of  climbing  safely 
into  Paradise  up  the  narrow  ladder  of  prayer,  fasting,  and 
obedience.  But  under  this  particular  white  tunic  thei-e  was 
a  heart  beating  with  a  consciousness  inconceivable  to  the 
average  monk,  and  perhaps  hard  to  be  conceived  by  any  man 
who  has  not  arrived  at  self-knowledge  through  a  tumultuous 
inner  life  :  a  consciousness  in  which  irrevocable  errors  and 
lapses  from  veracity  were  so  intwined  with  noble  purposes 
and  sincere  beliefs,  in  which  self-justifying  expediency  was 
so  inwoven  with  the  tissue  of  a  great  work  which  the  whole 
being  seemed  as  unable  to  abandon  as  the  body  was  unable  to 
abandon  glowing  and  trembling  before  the  objects  of  hope 
and  fear,  that  it  was  perhaps  impossible,  whatever  course 
might  be  adopted,  for  the  conscience  to  find  perfect  repose. 

Savonarola  was  not  only  in  the  attitude  of  prayer,  there 
were  Latin  words  of  prayer  on  his  lips ;  and  yet  he  was  not 
praying.  He  had  entered  his  cell,  had  fallen  on  his  knees, 
and  burst  into  words  of  supplication,  seeking  in  this  way  for 
an  influx  of  calmness  which  would  be  a  warrant  to  him  that 
the  resolutions  urged  on  him  by  crowding  thoughts  and  pas- 
sions were  not  wresting  him  away  from  the  Divine  support ; 
but  the  previsions  and  impulses  which  had  been  at  work  within 
him  for  the  last  hour  were  too  imperious ;  and  while  he 
pressed  his  hands  against  his  face,  and  while  his  lips  were 
uttering  audibly,  "  Cor  viundum  crea  in  vie"  his  mind  was 
still  filled  vv'illi  the  images  of  the  snare  his  enemies  had  pre- 


476  ROM  OLA. 

pared  for  him,  was  still  busy  with  the  arguments  by  which  be 
could  justify  himself  against  their  taunts  and  accusations. 

And  it  was  not  only  against  his  opponents  that  Savonarola 
had  to  defend  himself.  This  morning  he  had  had  new  proof 
that  his  friends  and  followers  were  as  much  inclined  to  urge 
on  the  Trial  by  Fire  as  his  enemies :  desiring  and  tacitly 
expecting  that  he  himself  would  at  last  accept  the  challenge 
and  ev^oke  the  long-expected  miracle  which  was  to  dissipate 
doubt  and  triumph  over  malignity.  Had  he  not  said  that 
God  would  declare  himself  at  the  fitting  time  ?  And  to  the 
understanding  of  plain  Florentines,  eager  to  get  party  ques- 
tions settled,  it  seemed  that  no  time  could  be  more  fitting  than 
this.  Certainly,  if  Fra  Domenico  walked  through  the  fire 
unhurt,  that  would  be  a  miracle,  and  the  faith  and  ardor  of 
that  good  brother  were  felt  to  be  a  cheering  augury ;  but 
Savonarola  was  acutely  conscious  that  the  secret  longing  of 
his  followers  to  see  him  accept  the  challenge  had  not  been 
dissipated  by  any  reasons  he  had  given  for  his  refusal. 

Yet  it  was  impossible  to  him  to  satisfy  them ;  and  with 
bitter  distress  he  saw  now  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  any 
longer  to  resist  the  prosecution  of  the  trial  in  Fra  Domenico's 
case.  Xot  that  Savonarola  had  uttered  and  written  a  falsity 
when  he  declared  his  belief  in  a  future  supernatural  attesta- 
tion of  his  work;  but  his  mind  was  so  constituted  that  while 
it  was  easy  for  him  to  believe  in  a  miracle  which,  being  dis- 
tant and  undefined,  was  screened  behind  the  strong  reasons 
he  saw  for  its  occurrence,  and  yet  easier  for  him  to  have  a 
belief  in  inward  miracles  such  as  his  own  prophetic  inspira- 
tion and  divinely  wrought  intuitions ;  it  was  at  the  same 
time  insurmountably  difficult  to  him  to  believe  in  the  proba- 
bility of  a  miracle  which,  like  this  of  being  carried  unhurt 
through  the  fire,  pressed  in  all  its  details  on  his  imagination 
and  involved  a  demand  not  only  for  belief  but  for  exceptional 
action. 

Savonarola's  nature  was  one  of  those  in  which  opposing 
tendencies  co-exist  in  almost  equal  strength :  the  passionate 
sensibility  which,  impatient  of  definite  thought,  floods  every 
idea  with  emotion  and  tends  towards  contem])lative  ecstasy, 
alternated  in  him  with  a  keen  perception  of  outward  facts 
and  a  vigorous  practical  judgment  of  men  and  things.  And 
in  this  case  of  the  Trial  by  Fire,  tlie  latter  characteristics 
were  stimulated  into  unusual  activity  by  an  acute  physical 
sensitiveness  which  gives  overpowering  force  to  the  conception 
of  pain  and  destruction  as  a  net'.essary  sequence  of  facts  which 


THE  PROPHET  IN  HIS  CELL.  i71 

have  already  been  causes  of  pain  in  our  experience.  The  promp- 
titude with  which  men  will  consent  to  touch  red-hot  iron  with 
a  wet  finger  is  not  to  be  measured  by  their  theoretic  acceptance 
of  the  impossibility  that  the  iron  will  burn  them  :  practical 
belief  depends  on  what  is  most  strongly  represented  in  the 
mind  at  a  given  moment.  And  with  the  Frate's  constitution, 
when  the  Trial  by  Fire  was  urged  on  his  imagination  as  an 
immediate  demand,  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  believe  that 
he  or  any  other  man  could  walk  through  the  flames  unhurt  — 
impossible  for  him  to  believe  that  even  if  he  resolved  to  offer 
himself,  he  would  not  shrink  at  the  last  moment. 

But  the  Florentines  were  not  likely  to  make  these  fine  dis- 
tinctions. To  the  common  run  of  mankind  it  has  always 
seemed  a  proof  of  mental  vigor  to  find  moral  questions  easy, 
and  judge  conduct  according  to  concise  alternatives.  And 
nothing  was  likely  to  seem  plainer  than  that  a  man  who  at 
one  time  declared  that  God  would  not  leave  him  without  the 
guarantee  of  a  miracle,  and  yet  drew  back  when  it  was  pro- 
posed to  test  his  declaration,  had  said  what  he  did  not  believe. 
Were  not  Fra  Domenico  and  Fra  Mariano,  and  scores  of 
Piagnoni  besides,  ready  to  enter  the  fire  ?  What  was  the 
cause  of  their  superior  courage,  if  it  was  not  their  superior 
faith  ?  Savonarola  could  not  have  explained  his  conduct 
satisfactorily  to  his  friends,  even  if  he  had  been  able  to  ex- 
plain it  thoroughly  to  himself.  And  he  was  not.  Our  naked 
feeling':  make  haste  to  clothe  themselves  in  propositions 
which  lie  at  hand  among  our  store  of  opinions,  and  to  give  a 
true  account  of  what  passes  within  us  something  else  is 
necessary  besides  sincerity,  even  when  sincerity  is  unmixed. 
In  these  very  moments,  when  Savonarola  was  kneeling  in 
audible  prayer,  he  had  ceased  to  hear  the  words  on  his  lips. 
They  were  drowned  by  argumentative  voices  within  him  that 
shaped  their  reasons  more  and  more  for  an  outward  audience. 

"  To  appeal  to  heaven  for  a  miracle  by  a  rash  acceptance  of 
a  challenge,  which  is  a  mere  snare  prepared  for  me  by  ignoble 
foes,  would  be  a  tempting  of  God,  and  the  appeal  would  not 
be  responded  to.  Let  the  Pope's  legate  come,  let  the  ambas^ 
sadors  of  all  the  great  Powers  come  and  promise  that  the  call- 
ing of  a  General  Council  and  the  reform  of  the  Church  shall 
hang  on  the  miracle,  and  I  will  enter  the  flames,  trusting  that 
God  will  not  withhold  His  seal  from  that  great  work.  Until 
then  I  reserve  myself  for  higher  duties  which  are  directly 
laid  upon  me :  it  is  not  permitted  to  me  to  leap  from  the 
chariot  for  the  sake  of  wrestling   with  every   loud  vaunter- 


478  kOMOLA. 

But  Fra  Domenico's  invincible  zeal  to  enter  into  the  trial  maj 
be  the  sign  of  a  Divine  vocation,  may  be  a  pledge  that  the 
miracle  "  — 

But  no  !  when  Savonarola  brought  his  mind  close  to  the 
threatened  scene  in  the  Piazza,  and  imagined  a  human  body 
entering  the  fire,  his  belief  recoiled  again.  It  was  not  an  event 
that  his  imagination  could  simply  see :  he  felt  it  with  shud- 
dering vibrations  to  the  extremities  of  his  sensitive  fingers. 
The  miracle  could  not  be.  Nay,  the  trial  itself  was  not  to 
happen  :  he  was  warranted  in  doing  all  in  his  power  to  hinder 
it.  The  fuel  might  be  got  ready  in  the  Piazza,  the  people 
might  be  assembled,  the  preparatory  formalities  might  be 
gone  through  :  all  this  was  perhaps  inevitable  now,  and  he 
could  no  longer  resist  it  without  bringing  dishonor  on  —  him- 
self ?  Yes,  and  therefore  on  the  cause  of  God.  But  it  was 
not  really  intended  that  the  Franciscan  should  enter  the  fire, 
and  while  he  hung  back  there  would  be  the  means  of  prevent- 
ing Fra  Domenico's  entrance.  At  the  very  worst,  if  Fra  Do- 
raenico  were  compelled  to  enter,  he  should  carry  the  conse- 
crated Host  with  him,  and  with  that  Mystery  in  his  hand, 
there  might  be  a  warrant  for  expecting  that  the  ordinary 
effects  of  fire  would  be  stayed  ;  or,  more  probably,  this  demand 
would  be  resisted,  and  might  thus  be  a  final  obstacle  to  the  trial. 

But  these  intentions  could  not  be  avowed  :  he  must  appear 
frankly  to  await  the  trial,  and  to  trust  in  its  issue.  That  dis- 
sidence  between  inward  reality  and  outward  seeming  was  not 
the  Christian  simplicity  after  which  he  had  striven  through 
years  of  his  youth  and  prime,  and  which  he  had  preached  as 
a  chief  fruit  of  the  Divine  life.  In  the  stress  and  heat  of 
the  day,  with  cheeks  burning,  with  shouts  ringing  in  the  ears, 
who  is  so  blest  as  to  remember  the  yearnings  he  had  in  the 
cool  and  silent  morning  and  know  that  he  has  not  belied 
them  ? 

''0  God,  it  is  for  the  sake  of  the  people  —  because  they  are 
blind  —  because  their  faith  dejjends  on  me.  If  I  put  on  sack- 
cloth and  cast  myself  among  the  ashes,  who  will  take  up  the 
standard  and  head  the  battle  ?  Have  I  not  been  led  by  a 
way  which  I  knew  not  to  the  work  that  lies  before  me  ?  " 

The  conflict  was  one  that  could  not  end,  and  in  the  effort 
at  prayerful  pleading  the  uneasy  mind  laved  its  smart  contin- 
ually in  thoughts  of  the  greatness  of  that  task  which  there 
was  no  man  else  to  fulfil  if  he  forsook  it.  It  was  not  a  thing 
of  every  day  that  a  man  should  be  inspired  with  the  vision 
and  the  daring  that  made  a  sacred  rebel. 


THE  PROPHET  IN  HIS   CELL.  479 

Even  the  words  of  prayer  had  died  away.  He  continued  to 
kneel,  but  his  mind  was  filled  with  the  images  of  results  to 
be  felt  through  all  Europe ;  and  the  sense  of  immediate  diffi- 
culties was  being  lost  in  the  glow  of  that  vision,  when  the 
knocking  at  the  door  announced  the  expected  visit. 

Savonarola  drew  on  his  mantle  before  he  left  his  cell,  as 
was  his  custom  when  he  received  visitors ;  and  with  that 
immediate  response  to  any  appeal  from  without  which  belongs 
to  a  power-loving  nature  accustomed  to  make  its  power  felt  by 
speech,  he  met  Tito  with  a  glance  as  self-possessed  and  strong 
as  if  he  had  risen  from  resolution  instead  of  conflict. 

Tito  did  not  kneel,  but  simply  made  a  greeting  of  profound 
deference,  which  Savonarola  received  quietly  without  any 
sacerdotal  words,  and  then  desiring  him  to  be  seated,  said  at 
once,  — 

"  Your  business  is  something  of  weight,  my  son,  that  could 
not  be  conveyed  through  others  ?  " 

*'  Assuredly,  father,  else  I  should  not  have  presumed  to  ask 
it.  I  will  not  trespass  on  your  time  by  any  proem.  I  gath- 
ered from  a  remark  of  Messer  Domenico  Mazzinghi  that  3'ou 
might  be  glad  to  make  use  of  the  next  special  courier  who  is 
sent  to  France  with  despatches  from  the  Ten.  I  must  entreat 
you  to  pardon  me  if  I  have  been  too  officious  ;  but  inasmuch  as 
Messer  Domenico  is  at  this  moment  away  at  his  villa,  I  wished 
to  apprise  you  that  a  courier  carrying  important  letters  is 
about  to  depart  for  Lyons  at  daybreak  to-morrow." 

The  muscles  of  Era  Girolamo's  face  were  eminently  under 
command,  as  must  be  the  case  with  all  men  whose  personality 
is  powerful,  and  in  deliberate  speech  he  was  habitually  cau- 
tious, confiding  his  intentions  to  none  withoiit  necessity. 
But  under  any  strong  mental  stimulus,  his  eyes  were  liable  to 
a  dilatation  and  added  brilliancy  that  no  strength  of  will 
could  control.  He  looked  steadily  at  Tito,  and  did  not  answer 
immediately,  as  if  he  had  to  consider  whether  the  information 
he  had  just  heard  met  any  purpose  of  his. 

Tito,  whose  glance  never  seemed  observant,  but  rarely  let 
anything  escape  it,  had  expected  precisely  that  dilatation  and 
flash  of  Savonarola's  eyes  Avhich  he  had  noted  on  other  occa- 
sions. He  saw  it,  and  then  immediately  busied  himself  in 
adjusting  his  gold  fibula,  which  had  got  wrong ;  seeming  to 
imply  that  he  awaited  an  answer  patiently. 

The  fact  was  that  Savonarola  had  expected  to  receive  this 
intimation  from  Domenico  Mazzinghi,  one  of  the  Ten,  an 
ardent  disciple  of  his  whom  he  had  already  employed  to  write 


480  ROMOLA. 

a  private  letter  to  the  Florentine  ambassador  in  France,  to 
prepare  the  way  for  a  letter  to  the  French  king  himself  in 
Savonarola's  handwriting,  which  now  lay  ready  in  the  desk  at 
his  side.  It  was  a  letter  calling  on  the  king  to  assist  in  sum- 
moning a  General  Council,  that  might  reform  the  abuses  of 
the  Church,  and  begin  by  deposing  Pope  Alexander,  who  was 
not  rightfully  Pope,  being  a  vicious  unbeliever,  elected  by 
corruption  and  governing  by  simony. 

This  fact  was  not  what  Tito  knew,  but  what  his  construc- 
tive talent,  guided  by  subtle  indications,  had  led  him  to  guess 
and  hope. 

"  It  is  true,  my  son,"  said  Savonarola,  quietly,  —  "  it  is  true 
I  have  letters  which  I  would  gladly  send  by  safe  conveyance 
under  cover  to  our  ambassador.  Our  community  of  San 
Marco,  as  you  know,  has  affairs  in  France,  being,  amongst 
other  things,  responsible  for  a  debt  to  that  singularly  wise 
and  experienced  Frenchman,  Signor  Philippe  de  Comines,  on 
the  library  of  the  Medici,  which  we  purchased ;  but  I  appre- 
hend that  Domenico  Mazzinghi  himself  may  return  to  the  city 
before  evening,  and  I  should  gain  more  time  for  preparation 
of  the  letters  if  I  waited  to  deposit  them  in  his  hands." 

"Assuredly,  reverend  father,  that  might  be  better  on  all 
grounds,  except  one,  namely,  that  if  anything  occurred  to 
hinder  Messer  Domenico's  return,  the  despatch  of  the  letters 
would  require  either  that  I  should  come  to  San  Marco  again 
at  a  late  hour,  or  that  you  should  send  them  to  me  by  your 
secretary ;  and  I  am  aware  that  you  wish  to  guard  against  the 
false  inferences  which  might  be  drawn  from  a  too  frequent 
communication  between  yourself  and  any  officer  of  the  gov- 
ernment." In  throwing  out  this  difficulty  Tito  felt  that  the 
more  unwillingness  the  Frate  showed  to  trust  him,  the  more 
certain  he  would  be  of  his  conjecture. 

Savonarola  was  silent ;  but  while  he  kept  his  mouth  firm,  a 
slight  glow  rose  in  his  face  with  the  suppressed  excitement 
that  was  growing  within  him.  It  would  be  a  critical  moment 
—  that  in  which  he  delivered  the  letter  out  of  his  own  hands. 

"  It  is  most  probable  that  Messer  Domenico  will  return  in 
time,"  said  Tito,  affecting  to  consider  the  Frate's  determina- 
tion settled,  and  rising  from  his  chair  as  he  spoke.  "  With 
your  permission,  I  will  take  my  leave,  father,  not  to  trespass 
on  your  time  when  my  errand  is  done :  but  as  I  may  not  be 
favored  with  another  interview,  I  venture  to  confide  to  you  — 
what  is  not  yet  known  to  others,  except  to  the  magnificent 
Ten  —  tliat  I   contemplate    resigning   my    secretaryship,  and 


THE  PROPHET  IN  HIS   CELL.  481 

leaving  Florence  shortly.  Am  I  presuming  too  much  on  your 
interest  in  stating  what  relates  chiefly  to  myself  ?  " 

"  Speak  on,  my  son,"  said  the  Frate  ;  "  I  desire  to  know 
your  prospects." 

"1  find,  then,  that  I  have  mistaken  my  real  vocation  in 
forsaking  the  career  of  pure  letters,  for  which  I  was  brought 
up.  The  politics  of  Florence,  father,  are  worthy  to  occupy 
the  greatest  mind  —  to  occupy  yours  —  when  a  man  is  in  a 
position  to  execute  his  own  ideas ;  but  when,  like  me,  he  can 
only  hope  to  be  the  mere  instrument  of  changing  schemes,  he 
requires  to  be  animated  by  the  minor  attachments  of  a  born 
Florentine  :  also,  my  wife's  unhappy  alienation  from  a  Floren- 
tine residence  since  the  painful  events  of  August  naturally 
influences  me.     I  wish  to  join  her." 

Savonarola  inclined  his  head  approvingly. 

"I  intend,  then,  soon  to  leave  Florence,  to  visit  the  chief 
courts  of  Europe,  and  to  widen  my  acquaintance  with  the 
men  of  letters  in  the  various  universities.  I  shall  go  first  to 
the  court  of  Hungary,  where  scholars  are  eminently  welcome ; 
and  I  shall  probably  start  in  a  week  or  ten  days.  I  have  not 
concealed  from  you,  father,  that  I  am  no  religious  enthusiast ; 
I  have  not  my  wife's  ardor  ;  but  religious  enthusiasm,  as  I 
conceive,  is  not  necessary  in  order  to  appreciate  the  grandeur 
and  justice  of  your  views  concerning  the  government  of  nations 
and  the  Church.  And  if  you  condescend  to  intrust  me  with 
any  commission  that  will  further  the  relations  you  wish 
to  establish,  I  shall  feel  honored.  May  I  now  take  my 
leave  ?  " 

"Stay,  my  son.  When  you  depart  from  Florence  I  will 
send  a  letter  to  your  wife,  of  whose  spiritual  welfare  I  would 
fain  be  assured,  for  she  left  me  in  anger.  As  for  the  letters 
to  France,  such  as  I  have  ready  "  — 

Savonarola  rose  and  turned  to  his  desk  as  he  spoke.  He 
took  from  it  a  letter  on  which  Tito  could  see,  but  not  read,  an 
address  in  the  Frate's  own  minute  and  exquisite  handwriting, 
still  to  be  seen  covering  the  margins  of  his  Bibles.  He  took 
a  large  sheet  of  paper,  enclosed  the  letter,  and  sealed  it. 

"  Pardon  me,  father,"  said  Tito,  before  Savonarola  had  time 
to  speak,  "  unless  it  were  your  decided  wish,  I  would  rather  not 
incur  the  responsibility  of  carrying  away  the  letter.  Messer 
Domenico  Mazzinghi  will  doubtless  return,  or,  if  not,  Fra  ISTiccolo 
can  convey  it  to  me  at  the  second  hour  of  the  evening,  when  I 
shall  place  the  other  despatches  in  the  courier's  hands." 

"At  present,  my  son,"  said  the  Fiate,  waiving  that  point, 


482  ROMOLA. 

"  I  wish  you  to  address  this  packet  to  our  ambassador  in  your 
own  handwriting,  wliich  is  preferable  to  my  secretary's." 

Tito  sat  down  to  write  the  address  while  the  Frate  stood 
by  him  with  folded  arms,  the  glow  mounting  in  his  cheek, 
and  his  lip  at  last  quivering.  Tito  rose  and  was  about  to 
move  away,  when  Savonarola  said  abruptly,  —  "  Take  it,  my 
son.  There  is  no  use  in  waiting.  It  does  not  please  me  that 
Fra  ]Sriccol6  should  have  needless  errands  to  the  Palazzo." 

As  Tito  took  the  letter,  Savonarola  stood  in  suppressed  ex- 
citement that  forbade  further  speech.  There  seems  to  be  a 
subtle  emanation  from  passionate  natures  like  his,  making 
their  mental  states  tell  immediately  on  others ;  when  they  are 
absent-minded  and  inwardly  excited  there  is  silence  in  the 
air. 

Tito  made  a  deep  reverence  and  went  out  with  the  letter 
under  his  mantle. 

The  letter  was  duly  delivered  to  the  courier  and  carried  out 
of  Florence.  But  before  that  happened  another  messenger, 
privately  employed  by  Tito,  had  conveyed  information  in 
cipher,  which  Avas  carried  by  a  series  of  relays  to  armed  agents 
of  Ludovico  Sforza,  Duke  of  Milan,  on  the  watch  for  the  very 
purpose  of  intercepting  despatches  on  the  borders  of  the 
Milanese  territory. 


CHAPTER  LXV. 

THE    TRIAL    BY    FIRE. 

Little  more  than  a  week  after,  on  the  seventh  of  April, 
the  great  Piazza  della  Signoria  presented  a  stranger  spectacle 
even  than  the  famous  Bonfire  of  Vanities.  And  a  greater 
multitude  had  assembled  to  see  it  than  had  ever  before  tried 
to  find  place  for  themselves  in  the  wide  Piazza,  even  on  the 
day  of  San  Giovanni. 

It  was  near  midday,  and  since  the  early  morning  there  had 
been  a  gradual  swarming  of  the  people  at  every  coign  of 
vantage  or  disadvantage  offered  by  the  fayades  and  roofs  of 
the  houses,  and  such  spaces  of  the  pavement  as  were  free  to 
the  public.  Men  were  seated  on  iron  rods  that  made  a  sharp 
angle  with  the  rising  wall,  were  clutching  slim  pillars  with 
arms  and  legs,  were  astride  on  tln'  necks  of  the  rough  statuary 
that  here  and  there  surmounted  the  entrances  of  the  grander 


THE   TRIAL  BY  FIRE.  483 

houses,  were  finding  a  palm's-breadth  of  seat  on  a  bit  of 
architrave,  and  a  footing  on  the  rough  projections  of  the 
rustic  stonework,  while  they  clutched  the  strong  iron  rings  or 
staples  driven  into  the  walls  beside  them. 

For  they  were  come  to  see  a  Miracle  :  cramped  limbs  and 
abraded  flesh  seemed  slight  inconveniences  with  that  prospect 
close  at  hand.  It  is  the  ordinary  lot  of  mankind  to  hear  of 
miracles,  and  more  or  less  to  believe  in  them  ;  but  now  the 
Florentines  were  going  to  see  one.  At  the  ver}^  least  they 
would  see  half  a  miracle  ;  for  if  the  monk  did  not  come  whole 
out  of  the  fire,  they  would  see  him  enter  it,  and  infer  that  he 
was  burned  in  the  middle. 

There  could  be  no  reasonable  doubt,  it  seemed,  that  the  fire 
would  be  kindled,  and  that  the  monks  would  enter  it.  For 
there,  before  their  eyes,  was  the  long  platform,  eight  feet 
broad,  and  twenty  yards  long,  with  a  grove  of  fuel  heaped  up 
terribly,  great  branches  of  dry  oak  as  a  foundation,  crackling 
thorns  above,  and  well-anointed  tow  and  rags,  known  to  make 
fine  fiames  in  Florentine  illuminations.  The  platform  began 
at  the  corner  of  the  marble  terrace  in  front  of  the  Old  Palace, 
close  to  Marzocco,  the  stone  lion,  whose  aged  visage  looked 
frowningly  along  the  grove  of  fuel  that  stretched  obliquely 
across  the  Piazza. 

Besides  that,  there  were  three  large  bodies  of  armed  men  : 
five  hundred  hired  soldiers  of  the  Signoria  stationed  before 
the  palace ;  five  hundred  Compagnacci  under  Dolfo  Spini,  far 
off  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Piazza ;  and  three  hundred 
armed  citizens  of  another  sort,  under  Marco  Salviati,  Savon- 
arola's friend,  in  front  of  Orgagna's  Loggia,  where  the  Francis- 
cans and  Dominicans  were  to  be  placed  with  their  champions. 

Here  had  been  much  expense  of  money  and  labor,  and 
high  dignities  were  concerned.  There  could  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  that  something  great  was  about  to  happen  ;  and  it  would 
certainly  be  a  great  thing  if  the  two  monks  were  simpty 
burned,  for  in  that  case  too  God  would  have  spoken,  and  said 
very  plainly  that  Fra  Girolamo  was  not  His  prophet. 

And  there  was  not  much  longer  to  wait,  for  it  was  now  near 
midday.  Half  the  monks  were  already  at  their  posts,  and 
that  half  of  the  Loggia  that  lies  towards  the  Palace  was 
already  filled  with  gray  mantles  ;  but  the  other  half,  divided 
off  b}^  boards,  was  still  empty  of  everything  except  a  small 
altar.  The  Franciscans  had  entered  and  taken  their  places  in 
silence.  But  now,  at  the  other  side  of  the  Piazza  Avas  heard 
loud  chanting  from  two  hundred  voices,  and  there  was  general 


/- 


-y 


484  HOMO  LA. 

satisfaction,  if  not  in  the  chanting,  at  least  in  the  evidence 
that  the  Dominicans  were  come.  That  loud  chanting  repeti- 
tion of  the  prayer,  "  Let  God  arise,  and  let  His  enemies  be 
scattered,"  was  unpleasantly  suggestive  to  some  impartial 
ears  of  a  desire  to  vaunt  confidence  and  excite  dismay ;  and  so 
was  the  flame-colored  velvet  cope  in  which  Fra  Domenico  was 
arraj^ed  as  he  headed  the  procession,  cross  in  hand,  his  simple 
mind  really  exalted  with  faith,  and  with  the  genuine  intention 
to  enter  the  flames  for  the  glory  of  God  and  Fra  Girolamo. 
Behind  him  came  Savonarola  in  the  white  vestment  of  a 
priest,  carrying  in  his  hands  a  vessel  containing  the  conse- 
crated Host.  He,  too,  was  chanting  loudly ;  he,  too,  looked 
firm  and  confident,  and  as  all  eyes  were  turned  eagerly  on 
him,  either  in  anxiety,  curiosity,  or  malignity,  from  the 
moment  when  he  entered  the  Piazza  till  he  mounted  the  steps 
of  the  Loggia  and  deposited  the  Sacrament  on  the  altar,  there 
was  an  intensifying  flasli  and  energy  in  his  countenance  re- 
sponding to  that  scrutiny. 

We  are  so  made,  almost  all  of  us,  that  the  false  seeming 
which  we  have  thought  of  with  painful  shrinking  when 
beforehand  in  our  solitude  it  has  urged  itself  on  us  as  a 
necessity,  will  possess  our  muscles  and  move  our  lips  as  if 
nothing  but  that  were  easy  when  once  we  have  come  under 
the  stimulus  of  expectant  eyes  and  ears.  And  the  strength 
of  that  stimulus  to  Savonarola  can  hardly  be  measured  by  the 
experience  of  ordinary  lives.  Perhaps  no  man  has  ever  had 
a  mighty  influence  over  his  fellows  without  having  the  innate 
need  to  dominate,  and  this  need  usually  becomes  the  more 
imperious  in  proportion  as  the  complications  of  life  make 
Self  inseparable  from  a  purpose  which  is  not  selfish.  In  this 
way  it  came  to  pass  that  on  the  day  of  the  Trial  by  Fire,  the 
doubleness  which  is  the  pressing  temptation  in  every  public 
career,  whether  of  priest,  orator,  or  statesman,  was  more 
strongly  defined  in  Savonarola's  consciousness  as  the  acting  of 
a  part,  than  at  any  other  period  in  liis  life.  He  was  struggling 
not  against  impending  martyrdom,  but  against  impending 
ruin. 

Therefore  he  looked  and  acted  as  if  he  were  thoroughly 
confident,  when  all  the  while  foreboding  was  pressing  with 
leaden  weight  on  his  heart,  not  only  because  of  the  probable 
issues  of  this  trial,  but  because  of  another  event  already  past 
—  an  event  which  was  spreading  a  sunny  satisfaction  through 
the  mind  of  a  man  who  was  looking  down  at  the  pasp-i on-worn 
prophet  from  a  window  of  the  Old  Palace.     It  was  a  common 


THE   TRIAL  BY  FIRE.  485 

turning-point  towards  which  those  widely  sundered  lives  had 
been  converging,  that  two  evenings  ago  the  news  had  come 
that  the  Florentine  courier  of  the  Ten  had  been  arrested  and 
robbed  of  all  his  despatches,  so  that  Savonarola's  letter  Avas 
already  in  the  hands  of  the  Duke  of  Milan,  and  would  soon 
be  in  the  hands  of  the  Pope,  not  only  heightening  rage,  but 
giving  a  new  justification  to  extreme  measures.  There  was 
no  malignity  in  Tito  Melema's  satisfaction  :  it  was  the  mild 
self-gratulation  of  a  man  who  has  won  a  game  that  has 
employed  hypothetic  skill,  not  a  game  that  has  stirred  the 
muscles  and  heated  the  blood.  Of  course  that  bundle  of 
desires  and  contrivances  called  human  nature,  when  moulded 
into  the  form  of  a  plain-featured  Frate  Predicatore,  more  or 
less  of  an  impostor,  could  not  be  a  pathetic  object  to  a  bril- 
liant-minded scholar  who  understood  everything.  Yet  this 
tonsured  Girolamo  with  the  high  nose  and  large  under  lip  was 
an  immensely  clever  Frate,  mixing  with  his  absurd  super- 
stitions or  fabrications  very  remarkable  notions  about  govern- 
ment :  no  babbler,  but  a  man  who  could  keep  his  secrets. 
Tito  had  no  more  spite  against  him  than  against  Saint 
Dominic.  On  the  contrary,  Fra  Girolamo's  existence  had 
been  highly  convenient  to  Tito  Melema,  furnishing  liim  with 
that  round  of  the  ladder  from  which  he  was  about  to  leap  on 
to  a  new  and  smooth  footing  very  much  to  his  heart's  content. 
And  everything  now  was  in  forward  preparation  for  that  leap  : 
let  one  more  sun  rise  and  set,  and  Tito  hoped  to  quit  Florence. 
He  had  been  so  industrious  that  he  felt  at  full  leisure  to 
amuse  himself  with  to-day's  comedy,  which  the  thick-headed 
Dolfo  Spini  could  never  have  brought  about  but  for  him. 

Not  yet  did  the  loud  chanting  cease,  but  rather  swelled  to  a 
deafening  roar,  being  taken  up  in  all  parts  of  the  Piazza  by 
the  Piagnoni,  who  carried  their  little  red  crosses  as  a  badge, 
and,  most  of  them,  chanted  the  prayer  for  the  confusion  of 
God's  enemies  with  the  expectation  of  an  answer  to  be  given 
through  the  medium  of  a  more  signal  personage  than  Fra 
Domenico.  This  good  Frate  in  his  flame-colored  cope  was 
now  kneeling  before  the  little  altar  on  which  the  Sacrament 
was  deposited,  awaiting  his  summons. 

On  the  Franciscan  side  of  the  Loggia  there  was  no  chanting" 
and  no  flame-color :  only  silence  and  grayness.  But  there  was 
this  counterbalancing  difference,  that  the  Franciscans  had  two 
champions :  a  certain  Fra  Giuliano  was  to  pair  with  Fra 
Domenico,  while  the  original  champion,  Fra  Francesco,  cou- 
tined  his  challenge  to  Savonarola. 


486  ROM  OLA. 

"  Surely,"  thought  the  men  perched  uneasily  on  the  rods 
and  pillars,  "  all  must  be  ready  now.  This  chanting  might 
stop,  and  we  should  see  better  when  the  Frati  are  moving 
towards  the  platform." 

But  the  Frati  were  not  to  be  seen  moving  yet.  Pale 
Franciscan  faces  were  looking  uneasily  over  the  boarding  at 
that  flame-colored  cope.  It  had  an  evil  look  and  might  be 
enchanted,  so  that  a  false  miracle  would  be  wrouglit  by  magic. 
Your  monk  may  come  whole  out  of  the  fire,  and  yet  it  may  be 
the  work  of  the  devil. 

And  now  there  was  passing  to  and  fro  between  the  Loggia 
and  the  marble  terrace  of  the  Palazzo,  and  the  roar  of  chant- 
ing became  a  little  quieter,  for  every  one  at  a  distance  was 
beginning  to  watch  more  eagerly.  Bui  it  soon  appeared  that 
the  new  movement  was  not  a  beginning,  but  an  obstacle  to 
beginning.  The  dignified  Florentines  appointed  to  preside 
over  this  affair  as  moderators  on  each  side,  went  in  and  out  of 
the  Palace,  and  there  was  much  debate  with  the  Franciscans. 
But  at  last  it  was  clear  that  Fra  Domenico,  conspicuous  in  his 
flame-color,  was  being  fetched  towards  the  Palace.  Probably 
the  fire  had  already  been  kindled  —  it  was  difficult  to  see  at  a 
distance  —  and  the  miracle  was  going  to  begin. 

Kot  at  all  —  the  flame-colored  cope  disap])eared  within  the 
Palace ;  then  another  Dominican  was  fetched  away ;  and  for 
a  long  while  everything  went  on  as  before  —  the  tiresome 
chanting,  which  Avas  not  miraculous,  and  Fra  Girolamo  in  his 
Avhite  vestment  standing  just  in  the  same  place.  But  at  last 
something  happened :  Fra  Domenico  was  seen  coming  out  of 
the  Palace  again,  and  returning  to  his  brethren.  He  had 
changed  all  his  clothes  with  a  brother  monk,  but  he  was 
guarded  on  each  flank  by  a  Franciscan,  lest  coming  into  the 
vicinity  of  Savonarola  he  should  be  enchanted  again. 

"Ah,  then,"  thought  the  distant  spectators,  a  little  less 
conscious  of  cramped  limbs  and  hunger,  "  Fra  Domenico  is 
not  goiug  to  enter  the  fire.  It  is  Fra  Girolamo  who  offers  him- 
self after  all.  We  shall  see  him  move  presently,  and  if  he 
comes  out  of  the  flames  we  shall  have  a  fine  view  of  him." 

But  Fra  Girolamo  did  not  move,  except  with  the  ordinar}'- 
action  accompanying  speech.  The  speech  was  bold  and  firm, 
perhaps  somewhat  ironically  remonstrant,  like  that  of  Elijah 
to  the  priests  of  Baal,  demanding  the  cessation  of  these  trivial 
delays.  But  speech  is  the  most  irritating  kind  of  argument 
for  those  who  are  out  of  hearing,  cramped  in  the  limbs,  and 
empty  in  the  stomach.     And  what  need  was  there  for  speech  ? 


CELLINI'S    STATUE    OF    PERSEUS    IN    THE    LOGGIA    DEI    LANZl. 


THE   TRIAL  BY  FIRE.  487 

If  the  miracle  did  not  begin,  it  could  be  no  one's  fault  but 
Fra  Girolamo's,  who  might  put  an  end  to  all  difficulties  by 
offering  himself  now  the  fire  was  ready,  as  he  had  been  for- 
ward enough  to  do  when  there  was  no  fuel  in  sight. 

More  movement  to  and  fro,  more  discussion  ;  and  the  after- 
noon seemed  to  be  slipping  away  all  the  faster  because  the 
clouds  had  gathered,  and  changed  the  light  on  everything,  and 
sent  a  chill  through  the  spectators,  hungry  in  mind  and  body. 

No%v  it  was  the  crucifix  which  Fra  Domenico  wanted  to 
carry  into  the  fire  and  must  not  be  allowed  to  profane  in  that 
manner.  After  some  little  resistance  Savonarola  gave  way  to 
this  objection,  and  thus  had  the  advantage  of  making  one 
more  concession ;  but  he  immediately  placed  in  Fra  Dome- 
nico's  hands  the  vessel  containing  the  consecrated  Host.  The 
idea  that  the  presence  of  the  sacred  Mystery  might  in  the 
worst  extremity  avert  the  ordinary  effects  of  fire  hovered  in 
his  mind  as  a  possibility ;  but  the  issue  on  which  he  counted 
was  of  a  more  positive  kind.  In  taking  up  the  Host  he  said 
quietly,  as  if  he  were  only  doing  what  had  been  presupposed 
from  the  first,  — 

"  Since  they  are  not  willing  that  you  should  enter  with  the 
crucifix,  my  brother,  enter  simply  with  the  Sacrament." 

New  horror  in  the  Franciscans ;  new  firmness  in  Savonarola. 
"  It  was  impious  presumption  to  carry  the  Sacrament  into  the 
tire :  if  it  were  burned  the  scandal  would  be  great  in  the 
minds  of  the  weak  and  ignorant.''  "  Not  at  all :  even  if  it 
were  burned,  the  Accidents  only  would  be  consumed,  the  Sub- 
stance would  remain."  Here  was  a  question  that  might  be 
argued  till  set  of  sun  and  remain  as  elastic  as  ever ;  and  no 
one  could  propose  settling  it  by  proceeding  to  the  trial,  since 
it  was  essentially  a  preliminary  question.  It  was  only  neces- 
sary that  both  sides  should  remain  firm — that  the  Francis- 
cans should  persist  in  not  permitting  the  Host  to  be  carried 
into  the  fire,  and  that  Fra  Domenico  should  persist  in  refusing 
to  enter  without  it. 

Meanwhile  the  clouds  were  getting  darker,  the  air  chiller. 
Even  the  chanting  was  missed  now  it  had  given  way  to  in- 
audible argument ;  and  the  confused  sounds  of  talk  from  all 
points  of  the  Piazza,  showing  that  expectation  was  everywhere 
relaxing,  contributed  to  the  irritating  presentiment  that  noth- 
ing decisive  would  be  done.  Here  and  there  a  dro^iping  shout 
was  heard  ;  then,  more  frequent  shouts  in  a  rising  scale  of 
scorn. 

"  Light  the  fire  and  drive  them  in  !  "     "  Let  us  have  a  smell 


488  ROM  OLA. 

of  roast  —  we  want  our  dinner  !  "  "  Come,  Prophet,  let  us 
know  whether  anything  is  to  happen  before  the  twenty-four 
hours  are  over  ! "  "  Yes,  yes,  what's  your  last  vision  ?  " 
"  Oh,  he's  got  a  dozen  in  his  inside ;  they're  the  small  change 
for  a  miracle  !  "  "  Ola,  Frate,  where  are  you  ?  Never  miud 
wasting  the  fuel !  " 

Still  the  same  movement  to  and  fro  between  the  Loggia 
and  the  Palace;  still  the  same  debate,  slow  and  unintelligible 
to  the  multitude  as  the  colloquies  of  insects  that  touch  an- 
tennge  to  no  other  apparent  effect  than  that  of  going  and 
coming.  But  an  interpretation  was  not  long  wanting  to  un- 
heard debates  in  which  Fra  Girolamo  was  constantly  a  speaker  : 
it  was  he  who  was  hindering  the  trial ;  everybody  was  appeal- 
ing to  him  now,  and  he  was  hanging  back. 

Soon  the  shouts  ceased  to  be  distinguishable,  and  were  lost 
in  an  uproar  not  simpl}^  of  voices,  but  of  clashing  metal  and 
trampling  feet.  The  suggestions  of  the  irritated  people  harl 
stimulated  old  impulses  in  Dolfo  Spini  and  his  band  of  Com- 
pagnacci ;  it  seemed  an  opportunity  not  to  be  lost  for  putting 
an  end  to  Florentine  difficulties  b}'^  getting  possession  of  the 
arch-hypocrite's  person  ;  and  there  was  a  vigorous  rush  of  the 
armed  men  towards  the  Loggia,  thrusting  the  people  aside,  or 
driving  them  on  to  the  file  of  soldiery  stationed  in  front  of 
the  Palace.  At  this  movement  everything  was  suspended 
both  with  monks  and  embarrassed  magistrates  except  the  pal- 
pitating watch  to  see  what  would  come  of  the  struggle. 

But  the  Loggia  was  well  guarded  by  the  band  under  the 
brave  Salviati ;  the  soldiers  of  the  Signoria  assisted  in  the  re- 
pulse ;  and  the  trampling  and  rushing  were  all  backward 
again  towards  the  Tetto  de'  Pisani,  when  the  blackness  of  the 
heavens  seemed  to  intensify  in  this  luoment  of  utter  confu- 
sion ;  and  the  rain,  which  had  already  been  felt  in  scattered 
drops,  began  to  fall  Avith  rapidly  growing  violence,  wetting 
the  fuel,  and  running  in  streams  off  the  platform,  wetting  the 
weary  hungry  people  to  the  skin,  and  driving  every  man's 
disgust  and  rage  inwards  to  ferment  there  in  the  damp 
darkness. 

Everybody  knew  now  that  the  Trial  by  Fire  was  not  to  hap- 
pen. The  Signoria  was  doubtless  glad  of  the  rain,  as  an  ob- 
vious reason,  better  than  any  pretext,  for  declaring  that  both 
parties  might  go  home.  It  was  the  issue  which  Savonarola 
had  expected  and  desired  ;  yet  it  would  be  an  ill  description 
of  what  he  felt  to  say  that  he  was  glad.  As  that  rain  fell, 
ajid  plashed  on  the  edge  of  the   Loggia,  and  sent  spray  over 


THE   THJAL  BY  FIRE.  489 

the  altar  and  all  garments  and  faces,  the  Frate  knew  that  the 
demand  for  him  to  enter  the  fire  was  at  an  end.  But  he  knew 
too,  with  a  certainty  as  irresistible  as  the  damp  chill  that  had 
taken  possession  of  his  frame,  that  the  design  of  his  enemies 
was  fulfilled,  and  that  his  honor  was  not  saved.  He  knev.' 
that  he  should  have  to  make  his  way  to  San  Marco  again 
through  the  enraged  crowd,  and  that  the  hearts  of  many 
friends  who  would  once  have  defended  him  with  their  lives 
would  now  be  turned  against  him. 

When  the  rain  had  ceased  he  asked  for  a  guard  from  the 
Signoria,  and  it  was  given  him.  Had  he  said  that  he  was 
willing  to  die  for  the  work  of  his  life  ?  Yes,  and  he  had  not 
spoken  falsely.  But  to  die  in  dishonor — held  up  to  scorn  as 
a  hypocrite  and  a  false  prophet  ?  "  Oh,  God  !  that  is  not 
martyrdom  !  It  is  the  blotting  out  of  a  life  that  has  been  a 
protest  against  wrong.  Let  me  die  because  of  the  worth  that 
is  in  me,  not  because  of  my  weakness." 

The  rain  had  ceased,  and  the  light  from  the  breaking  clouds 
fell  on  Savonarola  as  he  left  the  Loggia  in  the  midst  of  his 
guard,  walking  as  he  had  come,  with  the  Sacrament  in  his  hand. 
But  there  seemed  no  glory  in  the  light  that  fell  on  him  now, 
no  smile  of  heaven  :  it  was  only  that  light  which  shines  on, 
patiently  and  impartially,  justifying  or  condemning  by  simply 
showing  all  things  in  the  slow  history  of  their  ripening.  He 
heard  no  blessing,  no  tones  of  pity,  but  only  taunts  and 
threats.  He  knew  this  was  a  foretaste  of  coming  bitterness  j 
yet  his  courage  mounted  under  all  moral  attack,  and  he 
showed  no  sign  of  dismay. 

"Well  parried,  Frate  !"  said  Tito,  as  Savonarola  descended 
the  steps  of  the  Loggia.  "  But  I  fear  your  career  at  Florence 
is  ended.     What  say  you,  my  Niccolo  ?  " 

"  It  is  a  pity  his  falsehoods  were  not  all  of  a  wise  sort," 
said  Macchiavelli,  with  a  melancholy  shrug.  "  With  the 
times  so  much  on  his  side  as  they  are  about  Church  affairs,  lib 
might  have  done  something  great." 


490  ROMOLA. 


CHAPTER   LXVI. 

A    MASQUE    OF    THE    FURIES. 

The  next  day  was  Palm  Sunday,  or  Olive  Sunday,  as  it  was 
chiefly  called  in  the  olive-growing  Valdarno ;  and  the  morning 
sun  shone  with  a  more  delicious  clearness  for  the  yesterday's 
rain.  Once  more  Savonarola  mounted  the  pulpit  in  San 
Marco,  and  saw  a  flock  around  him  whose  faith  in  him  was 
still  unshaken ;  and  this  morning  in  calm  and  sad  sincerity 
he  declared  himself  ready  to  die ;  in  front  of  all  visions  he 
saw  his  own  doom.  Once  more  he  uttered  the  benediction,  and 
saw  the  faces  of  men  and  women  lifted  towards  him  in  vener- 
ating love.  Then  he  descended  the  steps  of  the  pulpit  and 
turned  away  from  that  sight  forever. 

For  before  the  sun  had  set  Florence  was  in  an  uproar.  The 
passions  which  had  been  roused  the  day  before  had  been 
smouldering  through  that  quiet  morning,  and  had  now  burst 
out  again  with  a  fury  not  unassisted  by  design,  and  not  with- 
out official  connivance.  The  uproar  had  begun  at  the  Duomo 
in  an  attempt  of  some  Compagnacci  to  hinder  the  evening 
sermon,  which  the  Piagnoni  had  assembled  to  hear.  But  no 
sooner  had  men's  blood  mounted  and  the  disturbances  had 
become  an  affray  than  the  cry  arose,  "  To  San  Marco  !  the  fire 
to  San  Marco  ! " 

And  long  before  the  daylight  had  died,  both  the  church  and 
convent  were  being  besieged  by  an  enraged  and  continually 
increasing  multitude.  Not  without  resistance.  For  the 
monks,  long  conscious  of  growing  hostility  without,  had  arms 
within  their  walls,  and  some  of  them  fought  as  vigorously  in 
their  long  white  tunics  as  if  they  had  been  Knights  Templars. 
Even  the  command  of  Savonarola  could  not  prevail  against 
the  impulse  to  self-defence  in  arms  that  were  still  muscular 
under  the  Dominican  serge.  Tliere  were  laymen  too  who  had 
not  chosen  to  depart,  and  some  of  them  fought  fiercely :  there 
was  firing  from  the  high  altar  close  by  the  great  crucifix, 
there  was  pouring  of  stones  and  hot  embers  from  the  convent 
roof,  there  was  close   fighting  with  swords  in  the   cloisters. 


A   MASQUE   OF  THE   FURIES.  491 

Notwithstanding  the  force  of  the  assailants,  the  attack  lasted 
till  deep  night. 

The  demonstrations  of  the  Government  had  all  been  against 
the  convent ;  early  in  the  attack  guards  had  been  sent  for, 
not  to  disperse  the  assailants,  but  to  command  all  within  the 
convent  to  lay  down  their  arms,  all  laymen  to  depart  from  it, 
and  Savonarola  himself  to  quit  the  Florentine  territory  within 
twelve  hours.  Had  Savonarola  quitted  the  convent  then,  he 
could  hardly  have  escaped  being  torn  to  pieces ;  he  was 
willing  to  go,  but  his  friends  hindered  him.  It  was  felt  to  be 
a  great  risk  even  for  some  laymen  of  high  name  to  depart  by 
the  garden  wall,  but  among  those  who  had  chosen  to  do  so  was 
Francesco  Valori,  who  hoped  to  raise  rescue  from  without. 

And  now  when  it  was  deep  night  —  when  the  struggle 
could  hardly  have  lasted  much  longer,  and  the  Compagnacci 
might  soon  have  carried  their  swords  into  the  library,  where 
Savonarola  was  praying  with  the  Brethren  who  had  either 
not  taken  uj)  arms  or  had  laid  them  down  at  his  command  — 
there  came  a  second  body  of  guards,  commissioned  by  the 
Signoria  to  demand  the  persons  of  Fra  Girolamo  and  his  two 
coadjutors,  Fra  Domenico  and  Fra  Salvestro. 

Loud  was  the  roar  of  triumphant  hate  when  the  light  of 
lanterns  showed  the  Frate  issuing  from  the  door  of  the  con- 
vent with  a  guard  who  promised  him  no  other  safety  than 
that  of  the  prison.  The  struggle  now  was,  who  should  get 
first  in  the  stream  that  rushed  up  the  narrow  street  to  see  the 
Prophet  carried  back  in  ignominy  to  the  Piazza  where  he  had 
braved  it  yesterday  —  who  should  be  in  the  best  place  for 
reaching  his  ear  with  insult,  nay,  if  possible,  for  smiting  him 
and  kicking  him.  This  was  not  difficult  for  some  of  the 
arnied  Compagnacci  who  were  not  prevented  from  mixing 
themselves  with  the  guards. 

When  Savonarola  felt  himself  dragged  and  pushed  along  in 
the  midst  of  that  hooting  multitude;  when  lanterns  were 
lifted  to  show  him  deriding  faces  ;  when  he  felt  himself  spit 
upon,  smitten  and  kicked  with  grossest  words  of  insult,  it 
seemed  to  him  that  the  worst  bitterness  of  life  was  past.  If 
men  judged  him  guilty,  and  were  bent  on  having  his  blood,  it 
was  only  death  that  awaited  him.  But  the  worst  drop  of 
bitterness  can  never  be  wrung  on  to  our  lips  from  without ; 
the  lowest  depth  of  resignation  is  not  to  be  found  in  martyr- 
dom ;  it  is  only  to  be  found  when  we  have  covered  our  heads 
in  silence  and  felt,  '•'  I  am  not  worthy  to  be  a  martyr ;  the 
Truth  shall  prosper,  but  not  by  me." 


492  ROM  OLA. 

But  that  brief  imperfect  triumph  of  insulting  the  Frate, 
who  had  soon  disappeared  under  the  doorway  of  the  Old 
Palace,  was  only  like  the  taste  of  blood  to  the  tiger.  Were 
there  not  the  houses  of  the  hypocrite's  friends  to  be  sacked  ? 
Already  one-half  of  the  armed  multitude,  too  much  in  the 
rear  to  share  greatly  in  the  siege  of  the  convent,  had  been 
employed  in  the  more  profitable  Avork  of  attacking  rich 
houses,  not  with  planless  desire  for  plunder,  but  with  that 
discriminating  selection  of  such  as  belonged  to  chief  Piagnoni, 
which  showed  that  the  riot  was  under  guidance,  and  that  the 
rabble  with  clubs  and  staves  was  well  officered  b}^  sword-girt 
Compagnacci.  Was  there  not  —  next  criminal  after  the  Frate 
—  the  ambitious  Francesco  Valori,  suspected  of  wanting  with 
the  Frate's  help  to  make  himself  a  Doge  or  Gonfaloniere  for 
life  ?  And  the  gray-haired  man  who,  eight  months  ago,  had 
lifted  his  arm  and  his  voice  in  such  ferocious  demand  for 
justice  on  five  of  his  fellow-citizens,  only  escaped  from  San 
Marco  to  experience  what  others  called  justice  —  to  see  his 
house  surrounded  by  an  angry,  greedy  multitude,  to  see  his 
wife  shot  dead  with  an  arrow,  and  to  be  himself  murdered,  as 
he  was  on  his  way  to  answer  a  summons  to  the  Palazzo,  by 
the  swords  of  men  named  Ridolfi  and  Tornabuoni. 

In  this  way  that  Masque  of  the  Furies,  called  Eiot,  was 
played  on  in  Florence  through  the  hours  of  night  and  early 
morning. 

But  the  chief  director  was  not  visible  :  he  had  his  reasons 
for  issuing  his  orders  from  a  private  retreat,  being  of  rather 
too  high  a  name  to  let  his  red  feather  be  seen  waving  amongst 
all  the  work  that  was  to  be  done  before  the  dawn.  The 
retreat  was  the  same  house  and  the  same  room  in  a  quiet 
street  between  Santa  Croce  and  San  Marco,  where  we  have 
seen  Tito  paying  a  secret  visit  to  Dolfo  Spini.  Here  the 
Captain  of  the  Compagnacci  sat  through  this  memorable 
night,  receiving  visitors  who  came  and  went,  and  went  and 
came,  some  of  them  in  the  guise  of  armed  Compagnacci,  others 
dressed  obscurely  and  without  visible  arms.  There  was 
abundant  wine  on  the  table,  with  drinking-cups  for  chance 
comers ;  and  though  Spini  was  on  his  guard  against  excessive 
drinking,  he  took  enough  from  time  to  time  to  heighten  the 
excitement  produced  by  the  news  that  was  being  brought  to 
him  continually. 

Among  the  obscurely  dressed  visitors  Ser  Ceccone  was  one 
of  the  most  frequent,  and  as  the  hours  advanced  towards 
the  morning  twilight  he  had  remained  as   Spini's   constant 


A   MASQUE   OF  THE  FURIES.  493 

companion,  together  with  Francesco  Cei,  who  was  then  in 
rather  careless  hiding  in  Florence,  expecting  to  have  his 
banishment  revoked  when  the  Frate's  fall  had  been  accom- 
plished. 

The  tapers  had  bnrnt  themselves  into  low  shapeless  masses, 
and  holes  in  the  shutters  were  just  marked  by  a  sombre  out- 
ward light,  when  Spini,  who  had  started  from  his  seat  and 
walked  up  and  down  with  an  angry  flush  on  his  face  at  some 
talk  that  had  been  going  forward  with  those  two  un military 
companions,  burst  out,  — 

"  The  devil  spit  him !  he  shall  pay  for  it,  though.  Ha,  ha ! 
the  claws  shall  be  down  on  him  when  he  little  thinks  of  them. 
So  he  was  to  be  the  great  man  after  all !  He's  been  pretend- 
ing to  chuck  everything  towards  my  cap,  as  if  I  were  a  blind 
beggar-man,  and  all  the  while  he's  been  winking  and  filling 
his  own  scarsella.  I  should  like  to  hang  skins  about  him  and 
set  my  hounds  on  him  !  And  he's  got  that  fine  ruby  of  mine, 
I  was  fool  enough  to  give  him  yesterday.  Malediction!  And 
he  was  laughing  at  me  in  his  sleeve  two  years  ago,  and 
spoiling  the  best  plan  that  ever  was  laid.  I  was  a  fool  for 
trusting  myself  with  a  rascal  who  had  long-twisted  contriv- 
ances that  nobody  could  see  to  the  end  of  but  himself." 

"A  Greek,  too,  who  dropped  into  Florence  with  gems 
packed  about  him,"  said  Francesco  Cei,  who  had  a  slight  smile 
of  amusement  on  his  face  at  Spini's  fuming.  "  You  did  not 
choose  your  confidant  very  wisely,  my  Dolfo." 

"He's  a  cursed  deal  cleverer  than  you,  Francesco,  and 
handsomer  too,"  said  Spini,  turning  on  his  associate  with  a 
general  desire  to  worry  anything  that  presented  itself. 

"  I  humbly  conceive,"  said  Ser  Ceccone,  "  that  Messer  Fran- 
cesco's poetic  genius  will  outweigh  "  — 

"  Yes,  yes,  rub  your  hands  !  I  hate  that  notary's  trick  of 
yours,"  interrupted  Spini,  whose  patronage  consisted  largely 
in  this  sort  of  frankness.  "But  there  comes  Taddeo,  or 
somebody  :  now's  the  time  !  What  news,  eh  ?  "  he  went  on, 
as  two  Compagnacci  entered  with  heated  looks. 

"  Bad  !  "  said  one.  "  The  people  have  made  up  their  minds 
they  were  going  to  have  the  sacking  of  Soderini's  house,  and 
now  they  have  been  balked  we  shall  have  them  turning  on  us, 
if  we  don't  take  care.  I  suspect  there  are  some  Mediceans 
buzzing  about  among  them,  and  we  may  see  them  attacking 
your  palace  over  the  bridge  before  long,  unless  we  can  find  a 
bait  for  them  another  way." 

"  I  have  it !  "  said  Spini,  and  seizing  Taddeo  by  the  belt  he 


494  ROMOLA. 

drew  him  aside  to  give  him  directions,  while  the  other  wont 
on  telling  Cei  how  the  Signoria  had  interfered  about  Soderini's 
house. 

"  Ecco  I "    exclaimed    Spini,    presently,    giving    Taddeo    a 
slight  push  towards  the  door.     ''  Go,  and  make  quick  work." 


CHAPTER  LXVII. 

WAITING    BY    THE    RIVER. 

About  the  time  when  the  two  Compagnacci  went  on  their 
errand,  there  was  another  man  who,  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  Arno,  was  also  going  out  into  the  chill  gray  twilight. 
His  errand,  apparently,  could  have  no  relation  to  theirs  ;  he 
was  making  his  way  to  the  brink  of  the  river  at  a  spot  which, 
though  within  the  city  walls,  was  overlooked  by  no  dwellings, 
and  which  only  seemed  the  more  shrouded  and  lonely  for  the 
warehouses  and  granaries  which  at  some  little  distance  back- 
ward turned  their  shoulders  to  the  river.  There  was  a  sloping 
Avidth  of  long  grass  and  rushes  made  all  the  more  dank  by 
broad  gutters  which  here  and  there  emptied  themselves  into 
the  Arno. 

The  gutters  and  the  loneliness  were  the  attraction  that  drew 
this  man  to  come  and  sit  down  among  the  grass,  and  bend 
over  the  waters  that  ran  swiftly  in  the  channelled  slope  at  his 
side.  For  he  had  once  had  a  large  piece  of  bread  brought  to 
him  b)^  one  of  those  friendly  runlets,  and  more  than  once  a 
raw  carrot  and  apple-parings.  It  was  worth  while  to  wait  for 
such  chances  in  a  place  where  there  was  no  one  to  see,  and 
often  in  his  restless  wakefulness  he  came  to  watch  here  before 
daybreak ;  it  might  save  him  for  one  day  the  need  of  that  silent 
begging  which  consisted  in  sitting  on  a  church-step  by  the  way- 
side out  beyond  the  Porta  San  Frediano. 

For  Baldassarre  hated  begging  so  much  that  he  would  per- 
haps have  chosen  to  die  rather  than  make  even  that  silent 
ai:)peal,  but  for  one  reason  that  made  him  desire  to  live.  It 
was  no  longer  a  hope ;  it  was  only  that  possibility  which 
clings  to  every  idea  that  has  taken  complete  possession  of  the 
mind :  the  sort  of  possibility  that  makes  a  woman  watch  on  a 
headland  for  the  ship  which  held  something  dear,  though  all 
her  neighbors  are  certain  that  the  ship  was  a  wreck  long 


WAITING  BY  THE  RIVER.  495 

years  ago.  After  he  had  come  out  of  the  convent  hospital, 
where  the  monks  of  San  Miniato  had  taken  care  of  him  as 
long  as  he  was  helpless  ;  after  he  had  watched  in  vain  for  the 
Wife  who  was  to  help  him,  and  had  begun  to  think  that  she 
was  dead  of  the  pestilence  that  seemed  to  fill  all  the  space 
since  the  night  he  parted  from  her,  he  had  been  unable  to 
conceive  any  way  in  which  sacred  vengeance  could  satisf}' 
itself  through  his  arm.  His  knife  was  gone,  and  he  was  too 
feeble  in  body  to  win  another  by  work,  too  feeble  in  mind, 
even  if  he  had  had  the  knife,  to  contrive  that  it  should  serve 
its  one  purpose.  He  was  a  shattered,  bewildered,  lonely  old 
man  ;  yet  he  desired  to  live :  he  waited  for  something  of 
which  he  had  no  distinct  vision  —  something  dim,  formless  — 
that  startled  him,  and  made  strong  pulsations  within  him,  like 
that  unknown  thing  which  we  look  for  when  we  start  from 
sleep,  though  no  voice  or  touch  has  waked  us.  Baldassarre 
desired  to  live ;  and  therefore  he  crept  out  in  the  gray  light, 
and  seated  himself  in  the  long  grass,  and  watched  the  waters 
that  had  a  faint  promise  in  them. 

Meanwhile  the  Compagnacci  were  busy  at  their  work.  The 
formidable  bands  of  armed  men,  left  to  do  their  will  with 
very  little  interference  from  an  embarrassed  if  not  conniving 
Signoria,  had  parted  into  two  masses,  but  both  were  soon  mak- 
ing their  way  by  different  roads  towards  the  Arno.  The 
smaller  mass  was  making  for  the  Ponte  Kubaconte,  the  larger 
for  the  Ponte  Vecchio ;  but  in  both  the  same  words  had  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth  as  a  signal,  and  almost  every  man  of  the 
multitude  knew  that  he  was  going  to  the  Via  de'  Bardi  to 
sack  a  house  there.  If  he  knew  no  other  reason,  could  he 
demand  a  better  ? 

The  armed  Compagnacci  knew  something  more,  for  a  brief 
word  of  command  flies  quickly,  and  the  leaders  of  the  two 
streams  of  rabble  had  a  perfect  understanding  that  they  would 
meet  before  a  certain  house  a  little  towards  the  eastern  end  of  the 
Via  de'  Bardi,  where  the  master  would  probably  be  in  bed, 
and  be  surprised  in  his  morning  sleep. 

But  the  master  of  that  house  was  neither  sleeping  nor  in 
bed ;  he  had  not  been  in  bed  that  night.  For  Tito's  anxiety 
to  quit  Florence  had  been  stimulated  by  the  events  of  the 
previous  day :  investigations  would  follow  in  which  appeals 
might  be  made  to  him  delaying  his  departure  :  and  in  all  delay 
he  had  an  uneasy  sense  that  there  was  danger.  Falsehood 
had  prospered  and  waxed  strong ;  but  it  had  nourished  the 
twin  life,  Fear.     He  no  longer  wore  his  armor,  he  was  no 


496  ROMOLA. 

louger  afraid  of  Baldassai-re  ;  but  from  the  corpse  of  that  dead 
fear  a  spirit  had  risen  —  the  undying  habit  of  fear.  He  felt 
he  should  not  be  safe  till  he  was  out  of  this  fierce,  turbid 
Florence  ;  and  now  he  was  ready  to  go.  Maso  was  to  deliver 
up  his  house  to  the  new  tenant ;  his  horses  and  mules  were 
awaiting  him  in  San  Gallo  ;  Tessa  and  the  children  had  been 
lodged  for  the  night  in  the  Borgo  outside  the  gate,  and  would 
be  dressed  in  readiness  to  mount  the  mules  and  join  him.  He 
descended  the  stone  steps  into  the  courtyard,  he  passed  through 
the  great  doorway,  not  the  same  Tito,  but  nearly  as  brilliant 
as  on  the  day  when  he  had  first  entered  that  house  and  made 
the  mistake  of  falling  in  love  with  Romola.  The  mistake  was 
remedied  now  :  the  old  life  was  cast  off,  and  was  soon  to  be 
far  behind  him. 

He  turned  with  rapid  steps  towards  the  Piazza  dei  Mozzi, 
intending  to  pass  over  the  Fonte  Rubaconte;  but  as  he  went 
along  certain  sounds  came  upon  bis  ears  that  made  him  turn 
round  and  walk  yet  more  quickly  in  the  opposite  direction. 
Was  the  mob  coming  into  Oltrarno  ?  It  was  a  vexation,  for 
he  would  have  preferred  the  more  private  road.  He  must 
now  go  by  the  Ponte  Vecchio;  and  unpleasant  sensations 
made  him  draw  his  mantle  close  round  him,  and  walk  at  his 
utmost  speed.  Thex*e  was  no  one  to  see  him  in  that  gray  twi- 
light. But  before  he  reached  the  end  of  the  Via  de'  Bardi, 
like  sounds  fell  on  his  ear  again,  and  this  time  they  were  much 
louder  and  nearer.  Could  he  have  been  deceived  before  ? 
The  mob  must  be  coming  over  the  Ponte  Vecchio.  Again  he 
turned,  from  an  impulse  of  fear  that  was  stronger  than  reflec- 
tion ;  but  it  was  only  to  be  assured  that  the  mob  was  actually 
entering  the  street  from  the  opposite  end.  He  chose  not  to 
go  back  to  his  house :  after  all  they  would  not  attack  hint. 
Still,  he  had  some  valuables  about  him  ;  and  all  things  except 
reason  and  order  are  possible  with  a  mob.  But  necessity  does 
the  work  of  courage.  He  went  on  towards  the  Ponte  Vecchio, 
the  rush  and  the  trampling  and  the  confused  voices  getting  so 
loud  before  him  that  he  had  ceased  to  hear  them  behind. 

For  he  had  reached  the  end  of  the  street,  and  the  crowd 
pouring  from  the  bridge  met  him  at  the  turning  and  hemmed 
in  his  way.  He  had  not  time  to  wonder  at  a  sudden  shout 
before  he  felt  himself  surrounded,  not,  in  the  first  instance,  by 
an  unarmed  rabble,  but  by  armed  Com})agnacci ;  the  next  sen- 
sation was  that  his  cap  fell  off,  and  that  he  was  thrust  violently 
forward  amongst  the  rabble,  along  tlie  narrow  passage  of  the 
bridge.  Then  he  distinguished  the  shouts,  "  Piaguone  !  Medi- 
cean  !  Piagnone  !     Throw  hiui  over  the  bridge  !" 


WAITING  BY  THE  RIVER.  497 

His  mantle  was  being  torn  off  him  with  strong  pulls  that  would 
have  throttled  him  if  the  tibula  had  not  given  way.  Then  his 
scarsella  was  snatched  at ;  but  all  the  while  he  was  being 
hustled  and  dragged  ;  and  the  snatch  failed  —  his  scarsella 
still  hung  at  his  side.  Shouting,  yelling,  half  motiveless  ex- 
ecration rang  stunningly  in  his  ears,  spreading  even  amongst 
those  who  had  not  yet  seen  him,  and  only  knew  there  was  a 
man  to  be  reviled.  Tito's  horrible  dread  was  that  he  should 
be  struck  down  or  trampled  on  before  he  reached  the  open 
arches  that  surmount  the  centre  of  the  bridge.  There  was 
one  hope  for  him,  that  they  might  throw  him  over  before  they 
had  wounded  him  or  beaten  the  strength  out  of  him  ;  and  his 
whole  soul  was  absorbed  in  that  one  hope  and  its  obverse 
terror. 

Yes  —  they  were  at  the  arches.  In  that  moment  Tito,  with 
bloodless  face  and  eyes  dilated,  had  one  of  the  self-preserving 
inspirations  that  come  in  extremity.  With  a  sudden  desperate 
effort  he  mastered  the  clasp  of  his  belt,  and  flung  belt  ancj 
scarsella  forward  towards  a  yard  of  clear  space  against  the 
parapet,  crying  in  a  ringing  voice,  — 

"  There  are  diamonds  !  there  is  gold  ! "' 

In  the  instant  the  hold  on  him  was  relaxed,  and  there  was 
a  rush  towards  the  scarsella.  He  threw  himself  on  the  para- 
pet with  a  desperate  leap,  and  the  next  moment  plunged  — 
plunged  with  a  great  plash  into  the  dark  river  far  below. 

It  was  his  chance  of  salvation ;  and  it  was  a  good  chance. 
His  life  had  been  saved  once  before  by  his  fine  swimming,  and 
as  he  rose  to  the  surface  again  after  his  long  dive  he  had  a 
sense  of  deliverance.  He  struck  out  with  all  the  energy  of 
his  strong  prime,  and  the  current  helped  him.  If  he  could 
only  swim  beyond  the  Ponte  alia  Carrara  he  might  land  in  a 
remote  part  of  the  city,  and  even  yet  reach  San  Gallo.  Life 
was  still  before  him.  And  the  idiot  mob,  shouting  and  bellow- 
ing on  the  bridge  there,  would  think  he  was  drowned. 

They  did  think  so.  Peering  over  the  parapet  along  the 
dark  stream,  they  could  not  see  afar  off  the  moving  blackness 
of  the  floating  hair,  and  the  velvet  tunic-sleeves. 

It  was  only  from  the  other  way  that  a  pale  olive  face  could 
be  seen  looking  white  above  the  dark  water :  a  face  not  easy 
even  for  the  indifferent  to  forget,  with  its  square  forehead,  the 
long  low  arch  of  the  eyebrows,  and  the  long  lustrous  agate-like 
eyes.  Onward  the  face  went  on  the  dark  current,  with  inflated 
quivering  nostrils,  with  the  blue  veins  distended  on  the  temples. 
One  bridge  was  passed  —  the  bridge  of  Santa  Trinita.     Should 


498  ROM  OLA. 

he  risk  landing  now  rather  than  trust  to  his  strength  ?  No. 
He  heard,  or  fancied  he  heard,  yells  and  cries  pursuing  him. 
Terror  pressed  him  most  i'rom  the  side  of  his  fellow-men :  he 
was  less  afraid  of  indetinite  chances,  and  he  swam  on,  panting 
and  straining.  He  was  not  so  fresh  as  he  would  have  been  if 
he  had  passed  the  night  in  sleep. 

Yet  the  next  bridge  —  the  last  bridge  —  was  passed.  He 
was  conscious  of  it ;  but  in  the  tumult  of  his  blood,  he  could 
only  feel  vaguely  that  he  was  safe  and  might  land.  But 
where  ?  The  current  was  having  its  way  with  him  :  he  hardly 
knew  where  he  was :  exhaustion  was  bringing  on  the  dreamy 
state  that  precedes  unconsciousness. 

But  now  there  were  eyes  that  discerned  him  —  aged  eyes, 
strong  for  the  distance.  Baldassarre,  looking  up  blankly  from 
the  search  in  the  runlet  that  brought  him  nothing,  had  seen  a 
white  object  coming  along  the  broader  stream.  Could  that  be 
any  fortunate  chance  for  him  ?  He  looked  and  looked  till  the 
object  gathered  form  :  then  he  leaned  forward  with  a  start  as 
he  sat  among  the  rank  green  stems,  and  his  eyes  seemed  to 
be  filled  with  a  new  light.  Yet  he  only  watched  —  motionless. 
Something  was  being  brought  to  him. 

The  next  instant  a  man's  body  was  cast  violently  on  the 
grass  two  yards  from  him,  and  he  started  forward  like  a 
panther,  clutching  the  velvet  tunic  as  he  fell  forward  on  the 
body  and  flashed  a  look  in  the  man's  face. 

Dead  —  was  he  dead  ?  The  eyes  were  rigid.  But  no,  it 
could  not  be  —  Justice  had  brought  him.  Men  looked  dead 
sometimes,  and  yet  the  life  came  back  into  them.  Baldassarre 
did  not  feel  feeble  in  that  moment.  He  knew  just  what  he 
could  do.  He  got  his  large  fingers  within  the  neck  of  the 
tunic  and  held  him  there,  kneeling  on  one  knee  beside  the 
body  and  watching  the  face.  There  was  a  fierce  hope  in  his 
heart,  but  it  was  mixed  with  trembling.  In  his  eyes  there 
was  only  fierceness  :  all  the  slow-biirning  remnant  of  life  with- 
in him  seemed  to  have  leaped  into  flame. 

Rigid  —  rigid  still.  Those  eyes  with  the  half-fallen  lids 
were  locked  against  vengeance.  Could  it  be  that  he  was 
dead  ?  There  was  nothing  to  measure  the  time  :  it  seemed 
long  enough  for  hope  to  freeze  into  despair. 

Surely  at  last  the  eyelids  were  quivering :  the  eyes  were  no 
longer  rigid.  There  was  a  vibrating  light  in  them  :  they 
opened  wide. 

"  Ah,  3'^es  !     You  see  me  —  you  know  me  ! " 

Tito  knew  him  ;  but  he  did  not  know  whether  it  was  life  or 


WAITING  BY  THE  RIVER.  499 

death  that  had  brought  him  into  the  presence  of  his  injured 
father.  It  miglit  be  death  —  and  death  might  mean  this  chill 
gloom  with  the  face  of  the  hideous  past  hanging  over  him 
forever. 

But  now  Baldassarre's  only  dread  was,  lest  the  young  limbs 
should  escape  him.  He  pressed  his  knuckles  against  the 
round  throat,  and  knelt  upon  the  chest  with  all  the  force  of 
his  aged  frame.     Let  death  come  now  ! 

Again  he  kept  his  watch  on  the  face.  And  when  the  eyes 
were  rigid  again,  he  dared  not  trust  them.  He  would  never 
lose  his  hold  till  some  one  came  and  found  them.  Justice 
would  send  some  witness,  and  then  he,  Baldassarre,  would 
declare  that  he  had  killed  this  traitor,  to  whom  he  had  once 
been  a  father.  They  would  perhaps  believe  him  now,  and 
then  he  would  be  content  with  the  struggle  of  justice  on  earth 
—  then  he  would  desire  to  die  with  his  hold  on  this  body,  and 
follow  the  traitor  to  hell  that  he  might  clutch  him  there. 

And  so  he  knelt,  and  so  he  pressed  his  knuckles  against  the 
round  throat,  without  trusting  to  the  seeming  death,  till  the 
light  got  strong  and  he  could  kneel  no  longer.  Then  he  sat 
on  the  body,  still  clutching  the  neck  of  the  tunic.  But  the 
hours  went  on,  and  no  witness  came.  No  eyes  descried  afar 
off  the  two  human  bodies  among  the  tall  grass  by  the  river-side. 
Florence  was  busy  with  greater  affairs,  and  the  preparation  of 
a  deeper  tragedy. 

Not  long  after  those  two  bodies  were  lying  in  the  grass, 
Savonarola  was  being  tortured,  and  crying  out  in  his  agony, 
"  I  will  confess  !  " 

It  was  not  until  the  sun  was  westward  that  a  wagon  drawn 
by  a  mild  gray  ox  came  to  the  edge  of  the  grassy  margin,  and 
as  the  man  who  led  it  was  leaning  to  gather  up  the  round 
stones  that  lay  heaped  in  readiness  to  be  carried  away,  he 
detected  some  startling  object  in  the  grass.  The  aged  man 
had  fallen  forward  and  his  dead  clutch  was  on  the  garment  of 
the  other.  It  was  not  possible  to  separate  them  :  nay,  it  was 
better  to  put  them  into  the  wagon  and  carry  them  as  they 
were  into  the  great  Piazza  that  notice  might  be  given  to  the 
Eight. 

As  the  wagon  entered  the  frequented  streets  there  was  a 
growing  crowd  escorting  it  with  its  strange  burden.  No  one 
knew  the  bodies  for  a  long  while,  for  the  aged  face  had  fallen 
forward,  half  hiding  the  younger.  But  before  they  had  been 
moved  out  of  sight,  they  had  been  recognized. 

"  I  know  that  old  man,"  Piero  di  Cosimo  had  testified.     '•  I 


500  ROMOLA. 

painted  his  likeness  once.  He  is  the  prisoner  who  clutehed 
Melema  on  the  steps  of  the  Duomo." 

"  He  is  perhaps  the  same  old  man  who  appeared  at  supper 
in  my  gardens,"  said  Bernardo  Rucellai,  one  of  the  Eight.  "  I 
had  foi'gotten  him.  I  thought  he  had  died  in  prison.  But 
there  is  no  knowing  the  truth  now." 

Who  shall  put  his  finger  on  the  work  of  justice,  and  say, 
"It  is  there"?  Justice  is  like  the  Kingdom  of  God  —  it  is 
not  without  us  as  a  fact,  it  is  within  us  as  a  great  yearning. 


CHAPTER   LXVIII. 

romola's  waking. 

RoMOLA  in  her  boat  passed  from  dreaming  into  long  deep 
sleep,  and  then  again  from  deep  sleep  into  busy  dreaming,  till 
at  last  she  felt  herself  stretching  out  her  arms  in  the  court  of 
the  Bargello,  where  the  flickering  flames  of  the  tapers  seemed 
to  get  stronger  and  stronger  till  the  dark  scene  was  blotted 
out  with  light.  Her  eyes  opened  and  she  saw  it  was  the  light 
of  morning.  Her  boat  was  lying  still  in  a  little  creek ;  on  her 
right  hand  lay  the  speckless  sapphire-blue  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean ;  on  her  left  one  of  those  scenes  which  were  and  still 
are  repeated  again  and  again  like  a  sweet  rhythm,  on  the  shores 
of  that  loveliest  sea. 

In  a  deep  curve  of  the  mountains  lay  a  breadth  of  green 
land,  curtained  by  gentle  tree-sbadowed  slopes  leaning  towards 
the  rocky  heights.  Up  these  slopes  might  be  seen  here  and 
there,  gleaming  between  the  tree-tops,  a  pathway  leading  to  a 
little  irregular  mass  of  building  that  seemed  to  have  clambered 
in  a  hasty  way  up  the  mountain-side,  and  taken  a  difficult 
stand  there  for  the  sake  of  showing  the  tall  belfry  as  a  sight 
of  beauty  to  the  scattered  and  clustered  houses  of  the  village 
below.  The  rays  of  the  newly  risen  sun  fell  obliquely  on  the 
westward  horn  of  this  crescent-shaped  nook  :  all  else  lay  in 
dewy  shadow.  No  sound  came  across  the  stillness  ;  the  very 
waters  seemed  to  have  curved  themselves  there  for  rest. 

The  delicious  sun-rays  fell  on  Romola  and  thrilled  her 
gently  like  a  caress.  She  lay  motionless,  hardly  watching  the 
scene ;  rather,  feeling  simply  the  presence  of  peace  and  beauty. 
While  we  are  still  in  our  youth  there  can  always  come,  in  our 


ROMOLA'S   WAKING.  501 

early  waking,  moments  when  mere  passive  existence  is  itself  a 
Lethe,  when  the  exquisiteness  of  subtle  indefinite  sensation 
creates  a  bliss  which  is  without  memory  and  without  desire. 
As  the  soft  warmth  penetrated  Romola's  young  limbs,  as  her 
eyes  rested  on  this  sequestered  luxuriance,  it  seemed  that  the 
agitating  past  had  glided  away  like  that  dark  scene  in  the 
Bargello,  and  that  the  afternoon  dreams  of  her  girlhood  had 
really  come  back  to  her.  For  a  minute  or  two  the  oblivion 
was  untroubled ;  she  did  not  even  think  that  she  could  rest 
here  forever,  she  only  felt  that  she  rested.  Then  she  became 
distinctly  conscious  that  she  was  lying  in  the  boat  which  had 
been  bearing  her  over  the  waters  all  through  the  night.  In- 
stead of  bringing  her  to  death,  it  had  been  the  gently  lulling 
cradle  of  a  new  life.  And  in  spite  of  her  evening  despair  she 
was  glad  that  the  morning  had  come  to  her  again :  glad  to 
think  that  she  was  resting  in  the  familiar  sunlight  rather  than 
in  the  unknown  regions  of  death.  Could  she  not  rest  here  ? 
No  sound  from  Florence  would  reach  her.  Already  oblivion 
was  troubled ;  from  behind  the  golden  haze  were  piercing 
domes  and  towers  and  walls,  parted  by  a  river  and  enclosed 
by  the  green  hills. 

She  rose  from  her  reclining  posture  and  sat  up  in  the  boat, 
willing,  if  she  could,  to  resist  the  rush  of  thoughts  that  urged 
themselves  along  with  the  conjecture  how  far  the  boat  had 
carried  her.  Why  need  she  mind  ?  This  was  a  sheltered 
nook  where  there  were  simple  villagers  who  would  not  harm 
her.  For  a  little  while,  at  least,  she  might  rest  and  resolve  on 
nothing.  Presently  she  would  go  and  get  some  bread  and 
milk,  and  then  she  would  nestle  in  the  green  quiet,  and  feel 
that  there  was  a  pause  in  her  life.  She  turned  to  watch  the 
crescent-shaped  valley,  that  she  might  get  back  the  soothing 
sense  of  peace  and  beauty  which  she  had  felt  in  her  first 
waking. 

She  had  not  been  in  this  attitude  of  contemplation  more 
than  a  few  minutes  when  across  the  stillness  there  came  a 
piercing  cry ;  not  a  brief  cry,  but  continuous  and  more  and 
more  intense.  Komola  felt  sure  it  was  the  cry  of  a  little  child 
in  distress  that  no  one  came  to  help.  She  started  up  and  put 
one  foot  on  the  side  of  the  boat  ready  to  leap  on  to  the  beach  ; 
but  she  paused  there  and  listened :  the  mother  of  the  child 
must  be  near,  the  cry  must  soon  cease.  But  it  went  on,  and 
drew  Komola  so  irresistibly,  seeming  the  more  piteous  to  her 
for  the  sense  of  peace  which  had  preceded  it,  that  she  jumped 
on  to  the  beach  and  walked  many  paces  before  she  knew  what 


502  ROMOLA. 

direction  she  would  take.  The  cry,  she  thought,  came  from 
some  rough  garden  growth  many  yards  on  her  right  hand, 
where  she  saw  a  half-ruined  hovel.  She  climbed  over  a  low 
broken  stone  fence,  and  made  her  way  across  patches  of  weedy 
green  crops  and  ripe  but  neglected  corn.  The  cry  grew 
plainer,  and  convinced  that  she  was  right  she  hastened  towards 
the  hovel ;  but  even  in  that  hurried  walk  she  felt  an  oppres- 
sive change  in  the  air  as  she  left  the  sea  behind.  Was  there 
some  taint  lurking  amongst  the  green  luxuriance  that  had 
seemed  such  an  inviting  shelter  from  the  heat  of  the  coming 
day  ?  She  could  see  the  opening  into  the  hovel  now,  and 
the  cry  was  darting  through  her  like  a  pain.  The  next 
moment  her  foot  was  within  the  doorway,  but  the  sight  she 
beheld  in  the  sombre  light  arrested  her  with  a  shock  of  awe 
and  horror.  Ou  the  straw,  with  which  the  floor  was  scattered, 
lay  three  dead  bodies,  one  of  a  tall  man,  one  of  a  girl  about 
eight  years  old,  and  one  of  a  young  woman  whose  long  black 
hair  was  being  clutched  and  pulled  by  a  living  child  —  the 
child  that  was  sending  forth  the  piercing  cry.  Eomola's  ex- 
perience in  the  haunts  of  death  and  disease  made  thought  and 
action  prompt :  she  lifted  the  little  living  child,  and  in  trying 
to  soothe  it  on  her  bosom,  still  bent  to  look  at  the  bodies  and 
see  if  they  were  really  dead.  The  strongly  marked  type  of 
race  in  their  features,  and  their  peculiar  garb,  made  her  con- 
jecture that  they  were  Spanish  or  Portuguese  Jews,  who  had 
perhaps  been  put  ashore  and  abandoned  there  by  rapacious 
sailors,  to  whom  their  property  remained  as  a  prey.  Such 
things  were  happening  continually  to  Jews  compelled  to  aban- 
don their  homes  by  the  Inquisition:  the  cruelty  of  greed 
thrust  them  from  the  sea,  and  the  cruelty  of  superstition 
thrust  them  back  to  it. 

"  But,  surely,"  thought  Romola,  "  I  shall  find  some  woman 
in  the  village  whose  mother's  heart  will  not  let  her  refuse  to 
tend  this  helpless  child  —  if  the  real  mother  is  indeed  dead." 

This  doubt  remained,  because  while  the  man  and  girl  looked 
emaciated  and  also  showed  signs  of  having  been  long  dead, 
the  woman  seemed  to  have  been  hardier,  and  had  not  quite 
lost  the  robustness  of  her  form.  Romola,  kneeling,  was  about 
to  lay  her  hand  on  the  heart ;  but  as  she  lifted  the  piece  of 
yellow  woollen  drapery  that  lay  across  the  bosom,  she  saw  the 
purple  spots  which  marked  the  familiar  pestilence.  Then  it 
struck  her  that  if  the  villagers  knew  of  this,  she  might  have 
more  difficulty  than  she  had  expected  in  getting  help  from 
them ;  they  would  perhaps  shrink  from  her  with  that  child  in 


ROMOLA'S   WAKING.  503 

her  arms.  But  she  had  money  to  offer  them,  and  they  would 
not  refuse  to  give  her  some  goat's  milk  in  exchange  for  it. 

She  set  out  at  once  towards  the  village,  her  mind  filled  now 
with  the  effort  to  soothe  the  little  dark  creature,  and  with  won- 
dering how  she  should  win  some  good  woman  to  be  good  to  it. 
She  could  not  help  hoping  a  little  in  a  certain  awe  she  had 
observed  herself  to  inspire,  when  she  appeared,  unknown  and 
unexpected,  in  her  religious  dress.  As  she  passed  across  a 
breadth  of  cultivated  ground,  she  noticed,  with  wonder,  that 
little  patches  of  corn  mingled  with  the  other  crops  had  been 
left  to  over-ripeness  untouched  by  the  sickle,  and  that  golden 
apples  and  dark  figs  lay  rotting  on  the  weedy  earth.  There 
were  grassy  spaces  within  sight,  but  no  cow,  or  sheep,  or  goat. 
The  stillness  began  to  have  something  fearful  in  it  to  Romola ; 
she  hurried  along  tOAvards  the  thickest  cluster  of  houses 
where  there  would  be  the  most  life  to  appeal  to  on  behalf  of 
the  helpless  life  she  carried  in  her  arms.  But  she  had  picked 
up  two  figs,  and  bit  little  pieces  from  the  sweet  pulp  to  still 
the  child  with. 

She  entered  between  two  lines  of  dwellings.  It  was  time 
that  villagers  should  have  been  stirring  long  ago,  but  not  a 
soul  was  in  sight.  The  air  was  becoming  more  and  more  op- 
pressive, laden,  it  seemed,  with  some  horrible  impurity. 
There  was  a  door  open ;  she  looked  in,  and  saw  grim  empti- 
ness. Another  open  door ;  and  through  that  she  saw  a  man 
lying  dead  with  all  his  garments  on,  his  head  lying  athwart  a 
spade  handle,  and  an  earthenware  cruse  in  his  hand,  as  if  he 
had  fallen  suddenly. 

Eomola  felt  horror  taking  possession  of  her.  Was  she  in  a 
village  of  the  unburied  dead  ?  She  wanted  to  listen  if  there 
were  any  faint  sound,  but  the  child  cried  out  afresh  when  she 
ceased  to  feed  it,  and  the  cry  filled  her  ears.  At  last  she  saw 
a  figure  crawling  slowly  out  of  a  house,  and  soon  sinking  back 
in  a  sitting  posture  against  the  wall.  She  hastened  towards 
the  figure ;  it  was  a  young  woman  in  fevered  anguish,  and  she, 
too,  held  a  pitcher  in  her  hand.  As  Romola  approached  her 
she  did  not  start ;  the  one  need  was  too  absorbing  for  any 
other  idea  to  impress  itself  on  her. 

'•'  Water !  get  me  water  !  "  she  said,  with  a  moaning  utter- 
ance. 

Romola  stooped  to  take  the  pitcher,  and  said  gently  in 
her  ear,  "  You  shall  have  water ;  can  you  point  towards  the 
well  ?  " 

The  hand  was  lifted  towards  the  more  distant  end  of  the 


504  ROMOLA. 

little  street,  and  Romola  set  off  at  once  with  as  much  speed  as 
she  could  use  under  the  difficulty  of  carrying  the  pitcher  as 
well  as  feeding  the  child.  But  the  little  one  was  getting  more 
content  as  the  morsels  of  sweet  pulp  were  repeated,  and 
ceased  to  distress  her  with  its  cry,  so  that  she  could  give  a  less 
distracted  attention  to  the  objects  around  her. 

The  well  lay  twenty  yards  or  more  beyond  the  end  of  the 
street,  and  as  Romola  was  approaching  it  her  eyes  were 
directed  to  the  opposite  green  slope  immediately  below  the 
church.  High  up,  on  a  patch  of  grass  between  the  trees,  she 
had  descried  a  cow  and  a  couple  of  goats,  and  she  tried  to 
trace  a  line  of  path  that  would  lead  her  close  to  that  cheering 
sight,  when  once  she  had  done  her  errand  to  the  well.  Occu- 
pied in  this  way,  she  was  not  aware  that  she  was  very  near  the 
well,  and  that  some  one  approaching  it  on  the  other  side  had 
fixed  a  pair  of  astonished  eyes  upon  her. 

Romola  certainly  presented  a  sight  which,  at  that  moment 
and  in  that  place,  could  hardly  have  been  seen  without  some 
pausing  and  palpitation.  With  her  gaze  fixed  intently  on  the 
distant  slope,  the  long  lines  of  her  thick  gra}^  garment  giving  a 
gliding  character  to  her  rapid  walk,  her  hair  rolling  backward 
and  illuminated  on  the  left  side  by  the  sun-rays,  and  the  little 
olive  baby  on  her  right  arm  now  looking  out  with  jet-black 
eyes,  she  might  well  startle  that  youth  of  fifteen,  accustomed 
to  swing  the  censer  in  the  presence  of  a  Madonna  less  fair  and 
marvellous  than  this. 

"  She  carries  a  pitcher  in  her  hand  —  to  fetch  water  for  the 
sick.  It  is  the  Holy  Mother,  come  to  take  care  of  the  people 
who  have  the  pestilence." 

It  was  a  sight  of  awe :  she  would,  perhaps,  be  angry  with 
those  who  fetched  water  for  themselves  only.  The  youth 
flung  down  his  vessel  in  terror,  and  Eomola,  aware  now  of 
some  one  near  her,  saw  the  black  and  white  figure  fly  as  if  for 
dear  life  towards  the  slope  she  had  just  been  contemplating. 
But  remembering  the  parched  siifferer,  she  half  filled  her 
pitcher  quickly  and  hastened  back. 

Entering  the  house  to  look  for  a  small  cup,  she  saw  salt 
meat  and  meal :  there  were  no  signs  of  want  in  the  dwelling. 
With  nimble  movement  she  seated  the  baby  on  the  ground, 
and  lifted  a  cup  of  water  to  the  sufferer,  who  drank  eagerly 
and  then  closed  her  eyes  and  leaned  her  head  backward,  seem- 
ing to  give  herself  up  to  the  sense  of  relief.  Presently 
she  opened  her  eyes,  and,  looking  at  Romola,  said  lan- 
guidly, — 


ROMOLA'S    WAKING.  b{)b 

''  Who  are  you  ?  " 

'■•  I  came  over  the  sea,"  said  Romola.  "  I  only  came  this 
morning.     Are  all  the  people  dead  in  these  houses  ?  " 

"  I  think  they  are  all  ill  now  —  all  that  are  not  dead.  My 
father  and  my  sister  lie  dead  upstairs,  and  there  is  no  one  to 
bury  them :  and  soon  I  shall  die." 

"  Not  so,  I  hope,"  said  Romola.  "  I  am  come  to  take  care 
of  you.  I  am  used  to  the  pestilence ;  I  am  not  afraid.  But 
there  must  be  some  left  who  are  not  ill.  I  saw  a  youth 
running  towards  the  mountain  when  I  went  to  the  well." 

"  I  cannot  tell.  When  the  pestilence  came,  a  great  many 
people  went  away,  and  drove  off  the  cows  and  goats.  Give  me 
more  water  I " 

Romola,  suspecting  that  if  she  followed  the  direction  of  the 
youth's  flight,  she  should  find  some  men  and  women  who  were 
still  healthy  and  able,  determined  to  seek  them  out  at  once, 
that  she  might  at  least  win  them  to  take  care  of  the  child,  and 
leave  her  free  to  come  back  and  see  how  many  living  needed 
help,  and  how  many  dead  needed  burial.  She  trusted  to  her 
powers  of  persuasion  to  conquer  the  aid  of  the  timorous,  when 
once  she  knew  what  was  to  be  done. 

Promising  the  sick  woman  to  come  back  to  her,  she  lifted 
the  dark  bantling  again,  and  set  off  towards  the  slope.  She 
felt  no  burden  of  choice  on  her  now,  no  longing  for  death. 
She  was  thinking  how  she  would  go  to  the  other  sufferers,  as 
she  had  gone  to  that  fevered  woman. 

But,  with  the  child  on  her  arm,  it  was  not  so  easy  to  her  as 
usual  to  walk  up  a  slope,  and  it  seemed  a  long  while  before  the 
winding  path  took  her  near  the  cow  and  the  goats.  She  was 
beginning  herself  to  feel  faint  from  heat,  hunger,  and  thirst, 
and  as  she  reached  a  double  turning,  she  paused  to  consider 
whether  she  would  not  wait  near  the  cow,  which  some  one  was 
likely  to  come  and  milk  soon,  rather  than  toil  up  to  the  church 
before  she  had  taken  any  rest.  Raising  her  eyes  to  measure 
the  steep  distance,  she  saw  peeping  between  the  boughs,  not 
more  than  five  yards  oiT,  a  broad  round  face,  watching  her 
attentively,  and  lower  down  the  black  skirt  of  a  priest's  gar- 
ment, and  a  hand  grasping  a  bucket.  She  stood  mutely  observ- 
ing, and  the  face,  too,  remained  motionless.  Romola  had 
often  witnessed  the  overpowering  force  of  dread  in  cases  of 
pestilence,  and  she  was  cautious. 

Raising  her  voice  in  a  tone  of  gentle  pleading,  she  said,  ''  I 
came  over  the  sea.  I  am  hungry,  and  so  is  the  child.  Will 
you  not  give  us  some  milk  ?  " 


506  ROM  OLA. 

Romola  had  divined  part  of  the  truth,  but  she  had  not 
divined  that  pre-occupation  of  the  priest's  mind  which  charged 
her  words  with  a  strange  significance.  Only  a  little  while  ago, 
the  young  acolyte  had  brought  word  to  the  Padre  that  he  had 
seen  the  Holy  Mother  with  the  Babe,  fetching  water  for  the 
sick :  she  was  as  tall  as  the  cypresses,  and  had  a  light  about 
her  head,  and  she  looked  up  at  the  church.  The  pievano  ^ 
had  not  listened  with  entire  belief :  he  had  been  more  than 
fifty  years  in  the  world  without  having  any  vision  of  the 
Madonna,  and  he  thought  the  boy  might  have  misinterpreted 
the  unexpected  appearance  of  a  villager.  But  he  had  been 
made  uneasy,  and  before  venturing  to  come  down  and  milk  his 
cow,  he  had  repeated  many  Aves.  The  pievano's  conscience 
tormented  him  a  little  :  he  trembled  at  the  pestilence,  but  he 
also  trembled  at  the  thought  of  the  mild-faced  Mother,  con- 
scious that  that  Invisible  Mercy  might  demand  something 
more  of  him  than  prayers  and  ''  Hails."  In  this  state  of  mind 
—  unable  to  banish  the  image  the  boy  had  raised  of  the 
Mother  with  the  glory  about  her  tending  the  sick  —  the 
pievano  had  come  down  to  milk  his  cow,  and  had  suddenly 
caught  sight  of  Romola  pausing  at  the  parted  way.  Her  plead- 
ing words,  with  their  strange  refinement  of  tone  and  accent, 
instead  of  being  explanator}^,  had  a  preternatural  sound  for 
him.  Yet  he  did  not  quite  believe  he  saw  the  Holy  Mother  : 
he  was  in  a  state  of  alarmed  hesitation.  If  anything  miracu- 
lous were  happening,  he  felt  there  was  no  strong  presumption 
that  the  miracle  would  be  in  his  favor.  He  dared  not  run 
away  ;  he  dared  not  advance. 

"  Come  down,"  said  Komola,  after  a  pause.  "  Do  not  fear. 
Fear  rather  to  deny  food  to  the  hungry  when  they  ask 
you." 

A  moment  after,  the  boughs  were  parted,  and  the  complete 
figure  of  a  thick-set  priest  with  a  broad,  harmless  face,  his 
black  frock  much  worn  and  soiled,  stood,  bucket  in  hand, 
looking  at  her  timidly,  and  still  keeping  aloof  as  he  took  the 
path  towards  the  cow  in  silence. 

Romola  followed  him  and  watched  him  without  speaking 
again,  as  he  seated  himself  against  the  tethered  cow,  and, 
when  he  had  nervously  drawn  some  milk,  gave  it  to  her  in  a 
brass  cu])  he  carried  with  lum  in  the  bucket.  As  Romola  put 
the  cup  to  the  lips  of  the  eager  child,  and  afterwards  drank 
some  milk  herself,  the  Padre  observed  her  from  his  wooden 
stool  with  a  timidity  that  changed  its  character  a  little.     He 

'^I'aiisli  [)iii'fit. 


ROMOLA'S    WAKING.  507 

recognized  the  Hebrew  baby,  he  was  certaiD  that  he  had  a  sub- 
stantial woman  before  him ;  but  there  was  still  something 
strange  and  unaccountable  in  Romola's  presence  in  this  spot, 
and  the  Padre  had  a  presentiment  that  things  were  going  to 
change  with  him.  Moreover,  that  Hebrew  baby  was  terribly 
associated  with  the  dread  of  pestilence. 

Nevertheless,  when  Romola  smiled  at  the  little  one  sucking 
its  own  milky  lips,  and  stretched  out  the  brass  cup  again,  say- 
ing, "  Give  us  more,  good  father,"  he  obeyed  less  nervously 
than  before. 

Romola  on  her  side  was  not  unobservant ;  and  when  the 
second  supply  of  milk  had  been  drunk,  she  looked  down  at  the 
round-headed  man,  and  said  with  mild  decision,  — 

"  And  now  tell  me,  father,  how  this  pestilence  came,  and 
why  you  let  your  people  die  without  the  sacraments,  and  lie 
unburied.  For  I  am  come  over  the  sea  to  help  those  who  are 
left  alive --and  you,  too,  will  help  them  now." 

He  told  her  the  story  of  the  pestilence  :  and  while  he  was 
telling  it,  the  youth,  who  had  fled  before,  had  come  peeping 
and  advancing  gradually,  till  at  last  he  stood  and  watched  the 
scene  from  behind  a  neighboring  bush. 

Three  families  of  Jews,  twenty  souls  in  all,  had  been  put 
ashore  many  weeks  ago,  some  of  them  already  ill  of  the  pes- 
tilence. The  villagers,  said  the  priest,  had  of  course  refused 
to  give  shelter  to  the  miscreants,  otherwise  than  in  a  distant 
hovel,  and  under  heaps  of  straw.  But  when  the  strangers  had 
died  of  the  plague,  and  some  of  the  people  had  thrown  the 
bodies  into  the  sea,  the  sea  had  brought  them  back  again  in  a 
great  storm,  and  everybody  was  smitten  with  terror.  A  grave 
was  dug,  and  the  bodies  were  buried ;  but  then  the  pestilence 
attacked  the  Christians,  and  the  greater  number  of  the  vil- 
lagers went  away  over  the  mountain,  driving  away  their  few 
cattle,  and  carrying  provisions.  The  priest  had  not  fled ;  he 
had  stayed  and  prayed  for  the  people,  and  he  had  prevailed  on 
the  youth  Jacopo  to  stay  with  him  ;  but  he  confessed  that  a 
mortal  terror  of  the  plague  had  taken  hold  of  him,  and  he  had 
not  dared  to  go  down  into  the  valley. 

"You  will  fear  no  longer,  father,"  said  Romola,  in  a  tone  of 
encouraging  authority ;  "  you  will  come  down  with  me,  and 
we  will  see  who  is  living,  and  we  will  look  for  the  dead  to 
bury  them.  I  have  walked  about  for  months  where  the  pesti- 
lence was,  and  see,  I  am  strong.  Jacopo  will  come  with  us," 
she  added,  motioning  to  the  peeping  lad.  who  came  slowly 
from  behind  his  defensive  bush,  as  if  invisible  threads  were 
dragging  him. 


508  ROM  OLA. 

"Come,  Jacopo,"  said  Romola  again,  smiling  at  him,  "you 
will  carry  the  child  for  me.  See  !  your  arms  are  strong,  and 
I  am  tired." 

That  was  a  dreadful  proposal  to  Jacopo,  and  to  the  priest 
also  ;  but  they  were  both  under  a  peculiar  influence  forcing 
them  to  obey.  The  suspicion  that  Romola  was  a  supernatural 
form  was  dissipated,  but  their  minds  were  tilled  instead  with 
the  more  effective  sense  that  she  was  a  human  being  whom 
God  had  sent  over  the  sea  to  command  them. 

"  Now  we  will  carry  down  the  milk,"  said  Romola,  "and  see 
if  any  one  wants  it." 

So  they  went  all  together  down  the  slope,  and  that  morn- 
ing the  sufferers  saw  help  come  to  them  in  their  despair. 
There  were  hardly  more  than  a  score  alive  in  the  whole 
valley ;  but  all  of  these  were  comforted,  most  were  saved,  and 
the  dead  were  buried. 

In  this  way  days,  weeks,  and  months  passed  with  Romola 
till  the  men  were  digging  and  sowing  again,  till  the  women 
smiled  at  her  as  they  carried  their  great  vases  on  their  heads 
to  the  well,  and  the  Hebrew  baby  was  a  tottering  tumbling 
Christian,  Benedetto  by  name,  having  been  baptized  in  the 
church  on  the  mountain-side.  But  by  that  time  she  herself 
was  suffering  from  the  fatigue  and  languor  that  must  come 
after  a  continuous  strain  on  mind  and  body.  She  had  taken 
for  her  dwelling  one  of  the  houses  abandoned  by  their  owners, 
standing  a  little  aloof  from  the  village  street ;  and  here  on  a 
thick  heap  of  clean  straw  —  a  delicious  bed  for  those  who  do  not 
dream  of  down  —  she  felt  glad  to  lie  still  through  most  of  the 
daylight  hours,  taken  care  of  along  with  the  little  Benedetto 
by  a  woman  whom  the  pestilence  had  widowed. 

Every  day  the  Padre  and  Jacopo  and  the  small  flock  of  sur- 
viving villagers  paid  their  visit  to  this  cottage  to  see  the 
blessed  Lady,  and  to  bring  her  of  their  best  as  an  offering  — 
honey,  fresh  cakes,  eggs,  and  polenta.  It  was  a  sight  they 
could  none  of  them  forget,  a  sight  they  all  told  of  in  their  old 
age  —  how  the  sweet  and  sainted  lady  with  her  fair  face,  her 
golden  hair,  and  her  brown  eyes  that  had  a  blessing  in  them, 
lay  weary  with  her  labors  after  she  had  been  sent  over  the  sea 
to  help  them  in  their  extremity,  and  how  the  queer  little  black 
Benedetto  used  to  crawl  about  the  straw  by  her  side  and  want 
everything  that  was  brought  to  her,  and  she  always  gave  him 
a  bit  of  what  she  took,  and  told  them  if  they  loved  her  they 
must  be  good  to  Benedetto. 

Many  legends  were  afterwards  told  in  that  valley  about  the 


HOME  WARD.  509 

blessed  Lady  who  came  over  the  sea,  but  they  were  legends 
by  which  all  who  heard  might  know  that  in  times  gone  by  a 
woman  had  done  beautiful  loving  deeds  there,  rescuing  those 
who  were  ready  to  perish. 


CHAPTER   LXIX. 

HOMEWARD. 

In  those  silent  wintry  hours  when  Romola  lay  resting  from 
her  weariness,  her  mind,  travelling  back  over  the  past,  and 
gazing  across  the  undefined  distance  of  the  future,  saw  all 
objects  from  a  new  position.  Her  experience  since  the 
moment  of  her  waking  in  the  boat  had  come  to  her  with  as 
strong  an  effect  as  that  of  the  fresh  seal  on  the  dissolving 
wax.  She  had  felt  herself  without  bonds,  without  motive ; 
sinking  in  mere  egoistic  complaining  that  life  could  bring  her 
no  content ;  feeling  a  right  to  say,  "  I  am  tired  of  life,  I  want 
to  die."  That  thought  had  sobbed  within  her  as  she  fell 
asleep,  but  from  the  moment  after  her  waking  when  the  cry 
had  drawn  her,  she  had  not  even  reflected,  as  she  used  to  do 
in  Florence,  that  she  was  glad  to  live  because  she  could  lighten 
sorrow  —  she  had  simply  lived,  with  so  energetic  an  impulse 
to  share  the  life  around  her,  to  answer  the  call  of  need  and 
do  the  work  which  cried  aloud  to  be  done,  that  the  reasons 
for  living,  enduring,  laboring,  never  took  the  form  of  argu- 
ment. 

The  experience  was  like  a  new  baptism  to  Romola.  In 
Florence  the  simpler  relations  of  the  human  being  to  his  fel- 
low-men had  been  complicated  for  her  with  all  the  special  tiea 
of  marriage,  the  State,  and  religious  diseipleship,  and  when 
these  had  disappointed  her  trust,  the  shock  seemed  to  have 
shaken  her  aloof  from  life  and  stunned  her  sympathy.  But 
now  she  said,  '•'  It  was  mere  baseness  in  me  to  desire  death. 
If  everything  else  is  doubtful,  this  suffering  that  I  can  help  is 
certain ;  if  the  glory  of  the  cross  is  an  illusion,  the  sorrow  is 
only  the  truer.  While  the  strength  is  in  my  arm  I  will 
stretch  it  out  to  the  fainting ;  while  the  light  visits  my  eyes 
they  shall  seek  the  forsaken." 

And  then  the  past  arose  with  a  fresh  appeal  to  her.  Her 
work  in  this  green  valley  was  done,  and  the  emotions  that 


510  ROMOLA. 

were  disengaged  from  the  people  immediately  around  her 
rushed  back  into  the  old  deep  channels  of  use  and  affection. 
That  rare  possibility  of  self-contemplation  which  comes  in  any 
complete  severance  from  our  wonted  life  made  her  judge  her- 
self as  she  had  never  done  before :  the  compunction  which  is 
inseparable  from  a  sympathetic  nature  keenly  alive  to  the 
possible  experience  of  others,  began  to  stir  in  her  with  grow- 
ing force.  She  questioned  the  justness  of  her  own  conclu- 
sions, of  her  own  deeds  :  she  had  been  rash,  arrogant,  always 
dissatisfied  that  others  were  not  good  enough,  while  she  her- 
self had  not  been  true  to  what  her  soul  had  once  recognized 
as  the  best.  She  began  to  condemn  her  flight :  after  all,  it 
had  been  cowardly  self-care  ;  the  grounds  on  which  Savonarola 
had  once  taken  her  back  were  truer,  deeper  than  the  grounds 
she  had  had  for  her  second  flight.  How  could  she  feel  the 
needs  of  others  and  not  feel,  above  all,  the  needs  of  the 
nearest  ? 

But  then  came  re-action  against  such  self-reproach.  The 
memory  of  her  life  with  Tito,  of  the  conditions  which  made 
their  real  union  impossible,  while  their  external  union  imposed 
a  set  of  false  duties  on  her  which  were  essentially  the  conceal- 
ment and  sanctioning  of  what  her  mind  revolted  from,  told 
her  that  flight  had  been  her  only  resource.  All  minds,  except 
such  as  are  delivered  from  doubt  by  dulness  of  sensibility, 
must  be  subject  to  this  recurring  conflict  where  the  many- 
twisted  conditions  of  life  have  forbidden  the  fulfilment  of  a 
bond.  For  in  strictness  there  is  no  replacing  of  relations : 
the  presence  of  the  new  does  not  nullify  the  failure  and  breach 
of  the  old.  Life  has  lost  its  perfection :  it  has  been  maimed ; 
and  until  the  wounds  are  quite  scarred,  conscience  continually 
casts  backward,  doubting  glances. 

Romola  shrank  with  dread  from  the  renewal  of  her  proxim- 
ity to  Tito,  and  yet  she  was  uneasy  that  she  had  put  herself 
out  of  reach  of  knowing  what  was  his  fate  —  uneasy  that  the 
moment  might  yet  come  when  he  would  be  in  misery  and 
need  her.  There  was  still  a  thread  of  pain  within  her,  testi- 
fying to  those  words  of  Fra  Girolamo,  that  she  could  not 
cease  to  be  a  wife.  Could  anything  utterly  cease  for  her  that 
had  once  mingled  itself  with  the  current  of  her  heart's  blood  ? 

Florence,  and  all  her  life  there,  had  come  back  to  her  like 
hunger ;  her  feelings  could  not  go  wandering  after  the  possi- 
ble and  the  vague  :  their  living  fibre  was  fed  with  the  memory 
of  familiar  things.  And  the  thought  that  she  had  divided 
herself  from  them  forever  became  more  and  more  importunate 


HOMEWARD.  511 

in  these  hours  that  were  unfilled  with  action.  What  if  Fra 
Girolamo  had  been  wrong  ?  What  if  the  life  of  Florence  was 
a  web  of  inconsistencies  ?  Was  she,  then,  something  higher, 
that  she  should  shake  the  dust  from  off  her  feet,  and  say, 
"  This  world  is  not  good  enough  for  me  "  ?  If  she  had  been 
really  higher,  she  would  not  so  easily  have  lost  all  her  trust. 

Her  indignant  grief  for  her  godfather  had  no  longer  complete 
possession  of  her,  and  her  sense  of  debt  to  Savonarola  was 
recovering  predominance.  Nothing  that  had  come,  or  was  to 
come,  could  do  away  with  the  fact  that  there  had  been  a  great 
inspiration  in  him  which  had  waked  a  new  life  in  her.  Who, 
in  all  her  experience,  could  demand  the  same  gratitude  from 
her  as  he  ?     His  errors  —  might  they  not  bring  calamities  ? 

She  could  not  rest.  She  hardly  knew  whether  it  was  her 
strength  returning  with  the  budding  leaves  that  made  her 
active  again,  or  whether  it  was  her  eager  longing  to  get  nearer 
Florence.  She  did  not  imagine  herself  daring  to  enter 
Florence,  but  the  desire  to  be  near  enough  to  learn  what  was 
happening  there  urged  itself  with  a  strength  that  excluded  all 
other  purposes. 

And  one  March  morning  the  people  in  the  valley  were 
gathered  together  to  see  the  blessed  Lady  depart.  Jacopo 
had  fetched  a  mule  for  her,  and  was  going  with  her  over  the 
mountains.  The  Padre,  too,  was  going  with  her  to  the  nearest 
town,  that  he  might  help  her  in  learning  the  safest  way  by 
which  she  might  get  to  Pistoja.  Her  store  of  trinkets  and 
money,  untouched  in  this  valley,  was  abundant  for  her  needs. 

If  Romola  had  been  less  drawn  by  the  longing  that  was 
taking  her  away,  it  would  have  been  a  hard  moment  for  her 
when  she  walked  along  the  village  street  for  the  last  time, 
while  the  Padre  and  Jacopo,  with  the  mule,  were  awaiting  her 
near  the  well.  Her  steps  were  hindered  by  the  wailing  people, 
who  knelt  and  kissed  her  hands,  then  clung  to  her  skirts  and 
kissed  the  gray  folds,  crying,  "  Ah,  why  will  you  go,  when  the 
good  season  is  beginning  and  the  crops  will  be  plentiful  ?  Why 
will  you  go  ?  " 

'•'  Do  not  be  sorry,"  said  Romola,  "  you  are  well  now,  and  I 
shall  remember  j^ou.  I  must  go  and  see  if  my  own  people 
want  me." 

"  Ah,  yes,  if  they  have  the  pestilence  ! " 

'•  Look  at  us  again.  Madonna  !  " 

"  Yes,  yes,  we  will  be  good  to  the  little  Benedetto  ! " 

At  last  Romola  mounted  her  mule,  but  a  vigorous  screaming 
from  Benedetto  as  he  saw  her  turn  from  him  in  this  new 


512  ROMOLA. 

position,  was  an  excuse  for  all  the  people  to  follow  her  and 
insist  that  he  must  ride  on  the  mule's  neck  to  the  foot  of  the 
slope. 

The  parting  must  come  at  last,  but  as  Romola  turned 
continually  before  she  passed  out  of  sight,  she  saw  the  little 
flock  lingering  to  catch  the  last  waving  of  her  hand. 


CHAPTER     LXX. 


MEETING    AOAIJC. 


On  the  fourteenth  of  April  Romola  was  once  more  within 

the  walls  of  Florence.  Unable  to  rest  at  Pistoja,  where  con- 
tradictory reports  reached  her  about  the  Trial  by  Fire,  she  had 
gone  on  to  Prato  ;  and  was  beginning  to  think  that  she  should 
be  drawn  on  to  Florence  in  spite  of  dread,  when  she  encoun- 
tered that  monk  of  San  Spirito  who  had  been  her  godfather's 
confessor.  From  him  she  learned  the  full  story  of  Savonarola's 
arrest,  and  of  her  husband's  death.  This  Augustinian  monk 
had  been  in  the  stream  of  people  who  had  followed  the  wagon 
with  its  awful  burden  into  the  Piazza,  and  he  could  tell  her 
Avhat  was  generally  known  in  Florence  —  that  Tito  had  escaped 
from  an  assaulting  mob  by  leaping  into  the  Arno,  but  had  been 
murdered  on  the  bank  by  an  old  man  who  had  long  had  an 
enmity  against  him.  But  Romola  understood  the  catastrophe 
as  no  one  else  did.  Of  Savonarola  the  monk  told  her,  in  that 
tone  of  unfavorable  prejudice  which  was  usual  in  the  Black 
Brethren  (Frati  ISTeri)  towards  the  brother  who  showed  white 
under  his  black,  that  he  had  confessed  himself  a  deceiver  of 
the  people. 

Romola  paused  no  longer.  That  evening  she  was  in  Flor- 
ence, sitting  in  agitated  silence  under  the  exclamations  of  joy 
and  wailing,  mingled  with  exuberant  narrative,  which  were 
poured  into  her  ears  by  Monna  Brigida,  who  had  backslided 
into  false  hair  in  Romola's  absence,  but  now  drew  it  off  again 
and  declared  she  would  not  mind  being  gray,  if  her  dear  child 
would  stay  with  her. 

Romola  was  too  deeply  moved  by  the  main  events  which  she 
had  known  before  coming  to  Florence,  to  be  wrought  upon  by 
the  doubtful  gossi])ing  details  added  in  Brigida's  narrative. 
The  tragedy  of  her  husband's  death,  of  Fra  Girolamo's  con' 


MEETING  AGAIN.  513 

fession  of  duplicity  under  the  coercion  of  torture,  left  her 
hardly  any  power  of  apprehending  minor  circumstances.  All 
the  mental  activity  she  could  exert  under  that  load  of  awe- 
stricken  grief,  was  absorbed  by  two  purposes  which  must 
supersede  every  other  ;  to  try  and  see  Savonarola,  and  to  learn 
what  had  become  of  Tessa  and  the  children. 

••  Tell  me,  cousin,"  she  said  abruptly,  when  Monna  Brigida's 
tongue  had  run  quite  away  from  troubles  into  projects  of 
Romola's  living  with  her,  "  has  anything  been  seen  or  said 
since  Tito's  death  of  a  young  woman  with  two  little  chil- 
dren ?  " 

Brigida  started,  rounded  her  eyes,  and  lifted  up  her  hands. 

"  Cristo  !  no.  What !  was  he  so  bad  as  that,  my  poor  child  ? 
Ah,  then,  that  was  why  you  went  away,  and  left  me  word  only 
that  you  went  of  your  own  free  will.  Well,  well ;  if  I'd  known 
that,  I  shouldn't  have  thought  you  so  strange  and  flighty. 
For  I  did  say  to  myself,  though  I  didn't  tell  anybody  else, 
'What  was  S'he  to  go  away  from  her  husband  for,  leaving  him 
to  mischief,  only  because  they  cut  poor  Bernardo's  head  off  ? 
She's  got  her  father's  temper,'  I  said,  '  that's  what  it  is.' 
Well,  well ;  never  scold  me,  child  :  Bardo  was  fierce,  you  can't 
deny  it.  But  if  you  had  only  told  me  the  truth,  that  there 
was  a  young  hussy  and  children,  I  should  have  understood  it 
all.  Anything  seen  or  said  of  her  ?  Xo ;  and  the  less  the 
better.  They  say  enough  of  ill  about  him  without  that.  But 
since  that  was  the  reason  you  went "  — 

"  No,  dear  cousin,"  said  Eomola,  interrupting  her  earnestly, 
"pray  do  not  talk  so.  I  wish  above  all  things  to  find  that 
young  woman  and  her  children,  and  to  take  care  of  them. 
They  are  quite  helpless.  Say  nothing  against  it ;  that  is  the 
thing  I  shall  do  first  of  all." 

"  Well,"  said  Monna  Brigida,  shrugging  her  shoulders  and 
lowering  her  voice  with  an  air  of  puzzled  discomfiture,  "  if 
that's  being  a  Piagnone,  I've  been  taking  peas  for  paternosters. 
Why,  Fra  Girolamo  said  as  good  as  that  widows  ought  not  to 
marry  again.  Step  in  at  the  door  and  it's  a  sin  and  a  shame, 
it  seems  ;  but  come  down  the  chimney  and  you're  welcome. 
Two  children —  Santiddio  !  " 

•'  Cousin,  the  poor  thing  has  done  no  conscious  wrong :  she 
is  ignorant  of  everything.     I  will  tell  you  —  but  not  now." 

Early  the  next  morning  Romola's  steps  were  directed  to  the 
house  beyond  San  Ambrogio  where  she  had  once  found  Tessa; 
but  it  was  as  she  had  feared :  Tessa  was  gone.  Romola  con- 
jectured that  Tito  had  sent  her  away  beforehand  to  some  spot 


514  ROM  OLA. 

where  he  had  intended  to  join  her,  for  she  did  not  believe  that 
he  would  willingly  part  with  those  children.  It  was  a  painful 
conjecture,  because,  if  Tessa  were  out  of  Florence,  there  was 
hardly  a  chance  of  finding  her,  and  Eomola  pictured  the 
childish  creature  waiting  and  waiting  at  some  wayside  spot  in 
wondering,  helpless  misery.  Those  who  lived  near  could  tell 
her  nothing  except  that  old  deaf  Lisa  had  gone  away  a  week 
ago  with  her  goods,  but  no  one  knew  where  Tessa  had  gone. 
Romola  saw  no  further  active  search  open  to  her ;  for  she  had 
no  knowledge  that  could  serve  as  a  starting-point  for  inquiry, 
and  not  only  her  innate  reserve  but  a  more  noble  sensitiveness 
made  her  shrink  from  assuming  an  attitude  of  generosity  in 
the  eyes  of  others  by  publishing  Tessa's  relation  to  Tito, 
along  with  her  own  desire  to  find  her.  Many  days  passed  in 
anxious  inaction.  Even  under  strong  solicitation  from  other 
thoughts  Romola  found  her  heart  palpitating  if  she  caught 
sight  of  a  pair  of  round  brown  legs,  or  of  a  short  woman  in 
the  contadina  dress. 

She  never  for  a  moment  told  herself  that  it  was  heroism  or 
exalted  charity  in  her  to  seek  these  beings ;  she  needed  some- 
thing that  she  was  bound  specially  to  care  for ;  she  yearned  to 
clasp  the  children  and  to  make  them  love  her.  This  at  least 
would  be  some  sweet  result,  for  others  as  well  as  herself,  from 
all  her  past  sorrow.  It  appeared  there  was  much  property  of 
Tito's  to  which  she  had  a  claim ;  but  she  distrusted  the  clean- 
ness of  that  money,  and  she  had  determined  to  make  it  all 
over  to  the  State,  except  so  much  as  was  equal  to  the  price  of 
her  father's  library.  This  would  be  enough  for  the  modest 
support  of  Tessa  and  the  children.  But  Monna  Brigida  threw 
such  planning  into  the  background  by  clamorously  insisting 
that  Romola  niust  live  with  her  and  never  forsake  her  till  she 
had  seen  her  safe  in  Paradise  — else  why  had  she  persuaded 
her  to  turn  Piagnone  ?  — and  if  Romola  wanted  to  rear  other 
people's  children,  she,  Monna  Brigida,  must  rear  them  too. 
Only  they  must  be  found  first. 

Romola  felt  the  full  force  of  that  innuendo.  But  strong 
feeling  unsatisfied  is  never  without  its  superstition,  either  of 
hope  or  despair,  Romola's  was  the  superstition  of  hope  : 
somehojv  she  was  to  find  that  mother  and  the  children.  And 
at  last  another  direction  for  active  inquiry  suggested  itself. 
She  learned  that  Tito  had  provided  horses  and  mules  to  await 
him  in  San  Gallo ;  he  was  therefore  going  to  leave  Florence 
by  the  gate  of  San  Gallo,  and  she  determined,  though  without 
much  confidence  in  the  issue,  to  try  and  ascertain  from  the 


MEETING  AGAIN.  515 

gatekeepers  if  they  had  observed  any  one  corresponding  to 
the  description  of  Tessa,  with  her  children,  to  have  passed  the 
gates  before  the  morning  of  the  nintli  of  April.  Walking  along 
the  Via  San  Gallo,  and  looking  watchfully  about  her  through 
her  long  widow's  veil,  lest  she  should  miss  any  object  that  might 
aid  her,  she  descried  Bratti  chaffering  with  a  customer.  That 
roaming  man,  she  thought,  might  aid  her  :  she  would  not  mind 
talking  of  Tessa  to  him.  But  as  she  put  aside  her  veil  and 
crossed  the  street  towards  him,  she  saw  something  hanging 
from  the  corner  of  his  basket  which  made  her  heart  leap  with 
a  much  stronger  hope. 

•'  Bratti,  my  friend,"  she  said  abruptly,  "  where  did  you  get 
that  necklace  ?  " 

"  Your  servant,  madonna,"  said  Bratti,  looking  round  at  her 
very  deliberately,  his  mind  not  being  subject  to  surprise. 
"  It's  a  necklace  worth  money,  but  I  shall  get  little  by  it,  for 
my  heart's  too  tender  for  a  trader's  ;  I  have  promised  to  keep 
it  in  pledge." 

"  Pray  tell  me  where  you  got  it ;  —  from  a  little  woman 
named  Tessa,  is  it  not  true  ?  " 

"  Ah  !  if  you  know  her,"  said  Bratti,  ''  and  would  redeem 
it  of  me  at  a  small  prolit,  and  give  it  her  again,  you'd  be  doing 
a  charity,  for  she  cried  at  parting  with  it  —  you'd  have  thought 
she  was  running  into  a  brook.  It's  a  small  profit  I'll  charge 
you.  You  shall  have  it  for  a  florin,  for  I  don't  like  to  be 
hard-hearted." 

"Where  is  she  ?  "  said  Romola,  giving  him  the  money,  and 
unclasping  the  necklace  from  the  basket  in  joyful  agitation. 

"  Outside  the  gate  there,  at  the  other  end  of  the  Borgo,  at 
old  Sibilla  Manetti's  :  anybody  will  tell  you  which  is  the 
house." 

Romola  went  along  Avith  winged  feet,  blessing  that  incident 
of  the  Carnival  which  had  made  her  learn  by  heart  the  appear- 
ance of  this  necklace.  Soon  she  was  at  the  house  she  sought. 
The  young  woman  and  the  children  were  in  the  inner  room  — 
were  to  have  been    fetched  away  a  fortnight  ago  and  more 

—  had  no  money,  only  their  clothes,  to  pay  a  poor  widow  with 
for  their  food  and  lodging.     But  since  madonna  knew  them 

—  Romola  waited  to  hear  no  more,  but  opened  the  door. 
Tessa  was  seated  on  the  low  bed :  her  crying  had  passed 

into  tearless  sobs,  and  she  was  looking  with  sad  blank  eyes  at 
the  two  children,  who  were  playing  in  an  opposite  corner  — 
Lillo  covering  his  head  with  his  skirt  and  roaring  at  Ninna  to 
frighten  her,  then  peeping  out  again  to  see  how  she  bore  it. 


616  ROMOLA. 

The  door  was  a  little  behind  Tessa,  and  she  did  not  turn  round 
■when  it  opened,  thinking  it  was  only  the  old  woman :  expec- 
tation was  no  longer  alive.  Romola  had  thrown  aside  her 
veil  and  paused  a  moment,  holding  the  necklace  in  sight. 
Then  she  said,  in  that  pure  voice  that  used  to  cheer  her 
father,  — 

" Tessa ! " 

Tessa  started  to  her  feet  and  looked  round. 

"  See,"  said  Romola,  clasping  the  beads  on  Tessa's  neck, 
"  God  has  sent  me  to  you  again." 

The  poor  thing  screamed  and  sobbed,  and  clung  to  the  arms 
that  fastened  the  necklace.  She  could  not  speak.  The  two 
children  came  from  their  corner,  laid  hold  of  their  mother's 
skirts,  and  looked  up  with  wide  eyes  at  Eomola. 

That  day  they  all  went  home  to  Monna  Brigida's,  in  the 
Borgo  degli  Albizzi.  Eomola  had  made  known  to  Tessa  by 
gentle  degrees,  that  Naldo  could  never  come  to  her  again  : 
not  because  he  was  cruel,  but  because  he  was  dead. 

'''  But  be  comforted,  my  Tessa,"  said  Eomola.  ''  I  am  come 
to  take  care  of  you  always.  And  we  have  got  Lillo  and 
Ninna." 

Monna  Brigida's  mouth  twitched  in  the  struggle  between 
her  awe  of  Eomola  and  the  desire  to  speak  unseasonably. 

"  Let  be,  for  the  present,"  she  thought ;  "  but  it  seems  to 
me  a  thousand  years  till  I  tell  this  little  coutadina,  who  seems 
not  to  know  how  many  fingers  she's  got  on  her  hand,  who 
Eomola  is.  And  I  will  tell  her  some  day,  else  she'll  never 
know  her  place.  It's  all  very  well  for  Eomola ;  —  nobodj^  will 
call  their  souls  their  own  when  she's  by  ;  but  if  I'm  to  have 
this  puss-faced  minx  living  in  my  house  she  must  be  humble 
to  me." 

However,  Monna  Brigida  wanted  to  give  the  children  too 
many  sweets  for  their  supper,  and  confessed  to  Eomola,  the 
last  thing  before  going  to  bed,  that  it  would  be  a  shame  not 
to  take  care  of  such  cherubs. 

"  But  you  must  give  up  to  me  a  little,  Eomola,  about  their 
eating,  and  those  things.  For  you  have  never  had  a  baby, 
and  I  had  twins,  only  they  died  as  soon  as  they  were  born." 


THE   CONFESSION.  517 


CHAPTER   LXXI. 

THE    CONFESSION. 

When  Romola  brought  home  Tessa  and  the  children,  April 
was  already  near  its  close,  and  the  other  great  anxiety  on  her 
mind  had  been  wrought  to  its  highest  pitch  by  the  publica- 
tion in  print  of  Fra  Girolamo's  Trial,  or  rather  of  the  confes- 
sions drawn  from  him  by  the  sixteen  Florentine  citizens 
commissioned  to  interrogate  him.  The  appearance  of  this 
document,  issued  by  order  of  the  Signoria,  had  called  forth 
such  strong  expressions  of  public  suspicion  and  discontent, 
that  severe  measures  were  immediately  taken  for  recalling  it. 
Of  course  there  were  copies  accidentally  mislaid,  and  a  second 
edition,  not  by  order  of  the  Signoria,  was  soon  in  the  hands 
of  eager  readers. 

Romola,  who  began  to  despair  of  ever  speaking  with  Fra 
Girolamo,  read  this  evidence  again  and  again,  desiring  to 
judge  it  by  some  clearer  light  than  the  contradictory  impres- 
sions that  were  taking  the  form  of  assertions  in  the  mouths  of 
both  partisans  and  enemies. 

In  the  more  devout  followers  of  Savonarola  his  want  of 
constancy  under  torture,  and  his  retractation  of  prophetic 
claims,  had  produced  a  consternation  too  profound  to  be  at 
once  displaced  as  it  ultimately  was  by  the  suspicion,  which 
soon  grew  into  a  positive  datum,  that  any  reported  Avords  of 
his  which  were  in  inexplicable  contradiction  to  their  faith  in 
him,  had  not  come  from  the  lips  of  the  prophet,  but  from  the 
falsifying  pen  of  Ser  Ceccone,  that  notary  of  evil  repute,  who 
had  made  the  digest  of  the  examination.  But  there  were 
obvious  facts  that  at  once  threw  discredit  on  the  printed 
document.  Was  not  the  list  of  sixteen  examiners  half  made 
up  of  the  prophet's  bitterest  enemies  ?  Was  not  the  notori- 
ous Dolfo  Spini  one  of  the  new  Eight  prematurely  elected,  in 
order  to  load  the  dice  against  a  man  whose  ruin  had  been 
determined  on  by  the  party  in  power  ?  It  was  but  a  murder 
with  slow  formalities  that  was  being  transacted  in  the  Old 
Palace.  The  Signoria  had  resolved  to  drive  a  good  bargain 
with  the  Pope  and  the  Duke  of  Milan,  by  extinguishing  fchi'  man 


518  ROMOLA. 

who  was  as  great  a  molestation  to  vicious  citizens  and  greedy  for- 
eign tyrants  as  to  a  corrupt  clergy.  The  Frate  had  been  doomed 
beforehand,  and  the  only  question  that  was  pretended  to  exist 
now  was,  whether  the  Republic,  in  return  for  a  permission  to 
lay  a  tax  on  ecclesiastical  property,  should  deliver  him  alive 
into  the  hands  of  the  Pope,  or  whether  the  Pope  should 
further  concede  to  the  Republic  w^hat  its  dignity  demanded  — 
the  privilege  of  hanging  and  burning  its  own  prophet  on  its 
own  piazza. 

Who,  under  such  circumstances,  would  give  full  credit  to 
this  so-called  confession  ?  If  the  Frate  had  denied  his 
prophetic  gift,  the  denial  had  only  been  wrenched  from  him 
by  the  agony  of  torture — agony  that,  in  his  sensitive  frame, 
must  quickly  produce  raving.  What  if  these  wicked  examin- 
ers declared  that  he  had  only  had  the  torture  of  the  rope  and 
pulley  thrice,  and  only  on  one  day,  and  that  his  confessions 
had  been  made  when  he  was  under  no  bodily  coercion  —  was 
that  to  be  believed  ?  He  had  been  tortured  much  more  ;  he 
had  been  tortured  in  jjroportion  to  the  distress  his  confessions 
had  created  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  loved  him. 

Other  friends  of  Savonarola,  who  were  less  ardent  parti- 
sans, did  not  doubt  the  substantial  genuineness  of  the  confes- 
sion, however  it  might  have  been  colored  by  the  transpositions 
and  additions  of  the  notary ;  but  they  argued  indignantly  that 
there  was  nothing  which  could  warrant  a  condemnation  to 
death,  or  even  to  grave  punishment.  It  must  be  clear  to  all 
impartial  men  that  if  this  examination  represented  the  only 
evidence  against  the  Frate,  he  would  die,  not  for  any  crime, 
but  because  he  had  made  himself  inconvenient  to  the  Pope, 
to  the  rapacious  Italian  States  that  wanted  to  dismember 
their  Tuscan  neighbor,  and  to  those  unworthy  citizens  who 
sought  to  gratify  tlieir  private  ambition  in  opposition  to  the 
common  weal. 

Xot  a  shadow  of  political  crime  had  been  proved  against 
him.  Not  one  stain  had  been  detected  on  his  private  con- 
duct :  his  fellow-monks,  including  one  who  had  formerly  been 
his  secretary  for  several  years,  and  who,  with  more  than  the 
average  culture  of  his  companions,  had  a  disposition  to  criti- 
cise Fra  Girolamo's  rule  as  Prior,  bore  testimony,  even  after 
the  shock  of  his  retractation,  to  an  unimpeachable  purity  and 
consistency  in  his  life,  which  had  commanded  their  unsuspect- 
ing veneration.  The  Pope  himself  had  not  been  able  to  raise 
a  charge  of  heresy  against  the  Frate,  except  on  the  ground  of 
disobedience  to  a  mandate,  and  disregard  of  the   sentence  of 


THE   CONFESSION.  519 

excommunication.  It  was  difficult  to  justify  that  breach 
of  discipline  by  argument,  but  there  was  a  moral  insurgence 
in  the  minds  of  grave  men  against  the  Court  of  Rome,  which 
tended  to  confound  the  theoretic  distinction  between  the 
Church  and  churchmen,  and  to  lighten  the  scandal  of  dis- 
obedience. 

Men  of  ordinary  morality  and  public  spirit  felt  that  the 
triumph  of  the  Frate's  enemies  was  really  the  triumph  of 
gross  license.  And  keen  Florentines  like  Soderini  and  Piero 
Guicciardini  may  well  have  had  an  angry  smile  on  their  lips 
at  a  severity  which  dispensed  with  all  law  in  order  to  hang 
and  burn  a  man  in  whom  the  seductions  of  a  public  career 
had  warped  the  strictness  of  his  veracity;  may  well  have 
remarked  that  if  the  Frate  had  mixed  a  much  deeper  fraud 
with  a  zeal  and  ability  less  inconvenient  to  high  personages, 
the  fraud  would  have  been  regarded  as  an  excellent  oil  for 
ecclesiastical  and  political  wheels. 

Nevertheless  such  shrewd  men  were  forced  to  admit  that, 
however  poor  a  figure  the  Florentine  government  made  in  its 
clumsy  pretence  of  a  judicial  warrant  for  what  had  in  fact 
been  predetermined  as  an  act  of  policy,  the  measures  of  the 
Pope  against  Savonarola  were  necessary  measures  of  self- 
defence.  Not  to  try  and  rid  himself  of  a  man  who  wanted 
to  stir  up  the  Powers  of  Europe  to  summon  a  General  Coun- 
cil and  depose  him,  would  have  been  adding  ineptitude  to 
iniquity.  There  was  no  denying  that  towards  Alexander  the 
Sixth  Savonarola  was  a  rebel,  and,  what  was  much  more,  a 
dangerous  rebel.  Florence  had  heard  him  say,  and  had  well 
understood  what  he  meant,  that  he  would  not  obey  the  devil. 
It  was  inevitably  a  life  and  death  struggle  between  the  Frate 
and  the  Pope ;  but  it  was  less  inevitable  that  Florence  should 
make  itself  the  Pope's  executioner. 

Romola's  ears  were  filled  in  this  way  with  the  suggestions 
of  a  faith  still  ardent  under  its  wounds,  and  the  suggestions 
of  worldly  discernment,  judging  things  according  to  a  very 
moderate  standard  of  what  is  possible  to  human  nature.  She 
could  be  satisfied  with  neither.  She  brought  to  her  long 
meditations  over  that  printed  document  many  painful  obser- 
vations, registered  more  or  less  consciously  through  the  years 
of  her  discipleship,  which  whispered  a  presentiment  that 
Savonarola's  retractation  of  his  prophetic  claims  was  not 
merely  a  spasmodic  effort  to  escape  from  torture.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  her  soul  cried  out  for  some  explanation  of  his 
lapses  which  would  make  it  still  possible  for  her  to  believe 


520  ROMOLA. 

that  the  main  striving  of  his  life  had  been  pure  and  grand. 
The  recent  memory  of  the  selfish  discontent  which  had  come 
over  her  like  a  blighting  wind,  along  with  the  loss  of  her  trust 
in  the  man  who  had  been  for  her  an  incarnation  of  the  highest 
motives,  had  produced  a  re-action  which  is  known  to  many  as 
a  sort  of  faith  that  has  sprung  up  to  them  out  of  the  very 
depths  of  their  despair.  It  was  impossible,  she  said  novv', 
that  the  negative  disbelieving  thoughts  which  had  made  her 
soul  arid  of  all  good,  could  be  founded  in  the  truth  of  things  : 
impossible  that  it  had  not  been  a  living  spirit,  and  no  hollow 
pretence,  which  had  once  breathed  in  the  Frate's  words,  and 
kindled  a  new  life  in  her.  Whatever  falsehood  there  had 
been  in  him,  had  been  a  fall  and  not  a  purpose  ;  a  gradual  en- 
tanglement in  which  he  struggled,  not  a  contrivance  encour- 
aged by  success. 

Looking  at  the  printed  confessions,  she  saw  many  sentences 
which  bore  the  stamp  of  bungling  fabrication :  they  had  that 
emphasis  and  repetition  in  self-accusation  which  none  but 
very  low  hypocrites  use  to  their  fellow-men.  But  the  fact 
that  these  sentences  were  in  striking  opposition,  not  only  to 
the  character  of  Savonarola,  but  also  to  the  general  tone  of 
the  confessions,  strengthened  the  impression  that  the  rest  of 
the  text  represented  in  the  main  what  had  really  fallen  from 
his  lips.  Hardly  a  word  was  dishonorable  to  him  except 
what  turned  on  his  prophetic  annunciations.  He  was  unvary- 
ing in  his  statement  of  the  ends  he  had  pursued  for  Flor- 
ence, the  Church,  and  the  world ;  and,  apart  from  the  mixture 
of  falsity  in  that  claim  to  special  inspiration  by  which  he 
sought  to  gain  hold  of  men's  minds,  there  was  no  admission 
of  having  used  unworthy  means.  Even  in  this  confession,  and 
without  expurgation  of  the  notary's  malign  phrases,  Fra 
Girolamo  shone  forth  as  a  man  who  had  sought  his  own  glory 
indeed,  but  sought  it  by  laboring  for  the  very  highest  end  — 
the  moral  welfare  of  men  —  not  by  vague  exhortations,  but 
by  striving  to  turn  beliefs  into  energies  that  would  work  in  all 
the  details  of  life. 

"Everything  that  I  have  done,"  said  one  memorable 
passage,  which  may  perhaps  have  had  its  erasures  and  inter- 
polations, "  I  have  done  with  the  design  of  being  forever 
famous  in  the  present  and  in  future  ages ;  and  that  I  might 
win  credit  in  Florence ;  and  that  nothing  of  great  import 
should  be  done  without  my  sanction.  And  when  I  had  thus 
established  my  position  in  Florence,  I  had  it  in  my  mind  to 
do  great  things  in  Italy  and  beyond  Italy,  by  means  of  those 


THE   CONFESSION.  521 

cliief  personages  with  whom  I  had  contracted  friendship  and 
consulted  on  high  matters,  such  as  this  of  the  General  Council. 
And  in  proportion  as  my  first  efforts  succeeded,  I  should  have 
adopted  further  measures.  Above  all,  when  the  General 
Council  had  once  been  brought  about,  I  intended  to  rouse  the 
princes  of  Christendom,  and  especially  those  beyond  the 
borders  of  Italy,  to  subdue  the  infidels.  It  was  not  much  in 
my  thoughts  to  get  myself  made  a  Cardinal  or  Pope,  for  when 
I  should  have  achieved  the  work  I  had  in  view,  I  should, 
without  being  Pope,  have  been  the  first  man  in  the  world  in 
the  authority  I  should  have  possessed,  and  the  reverence  that 
would  have  been  paid  me.  If  I  had  been  made  Pope,  I  would 
not  have  refused  the  office :  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  to  be 
the  head  of  that  work  was  a  greater  thing  than  to  be  Pope, 
because  a  man  without  virtue  may  be  Pope ;  but  such  a  work 
as  I  contemplated  demanded  a  man  of  excellent  viy'tices." 

That  blending  of  ambition  with  belief  in  the  supremacy  of 
goodness  made  no  new  tone  to  Romola,  who  had  been  used  to 
hear  it  in  the  voice  that  rang  through  the  Duomo.  It  was 
the  habit  of  Savonarola's  mind  to  conceive  great  things,  and 
to  feel  that  he  was  the  man  to  do  them.  Iniquity  should  be 
brought  low ;  the  cause  of  justice,  purity,  and  love  should 
triumph ;  and  it  should  triumph  by  his  voice,  by  his  work,  by 
his  blood.  In  moments  of  ecstatic  contemplation,  doubt- 
less, the  sense  of  self  melted  in  the  sense  of  the  Unspeakable, 
and  in  that  part  of  his  experience  lay  the  elements  of  genuine 
self-abasement ;  but  in  the  presence  of  his  fellow-men  for 
whom  he  was  to  act,  pre-eminence  seemed  a  necessary  condi- 
tion of  his  life. 

And  perhaps  this  confession,  even  when  it  described  a 
doubleness  that  was  conscious  and  deliberate,  really  implied 
no  more  than  that  wavering  of  belief  concerning  his  own 
impressions  and  motives  which  most  human  beings  who  have 
not  a  stupid  inflexibility  of  self-confidence  must  be  liable  to 
under  a  marked  change  of  external  conditions.  In  a  life 
where  the  experience  was  so  turaultuously  mixed  as  it  must 
have  been  in  the  Prate's,  what  a  possibility  was  opened  for 
a  change  of  self-judgment,  when,  instead  of  eyes  that  vener- 
ated and  knees  that  knelt,  instead  of  a  great  work  on  its  way 
to  accomplishment,  and  in  its  prosperity  stamping  the  agent 
as  a  chosen  instrument,  there  came  the  hooting  and  the 
spitting  and  the  curses  of  the  crowd ;  and  then  the  hard  faces 
of  enemies  made  judges  ;  and  then  the  horrible  torture,  and 
with  the  torture   the  irrepressible  cry,  "  It  is  true,  what  you 


622  ROMOLA. 

would  have  me  say :  let  me  go :  do  not  torture  me  again : 
yes,  yes,  I  am  guilty.     0  God  !  Thy  stroke  has  reached  me  !  " 

As  Romola  thought  of  the  anguish  that  must  have  followed 
the  confession  —  whether,  in  the  subsequent  solitude  of  the 
prison,  conscience  retracted  or  confirmed  the  self-taxing  words 
—  that  anguish  seemed  to  be  pressing  on  her  own  heart  and 
urging  the  slow  bitter  tears.  Every  vulgar  self-ignorant 
person  in  Florence  was  glibly  pronouncing  on  this  man's 
demerits,  while  he  was  knowing  a  depth  of  sorrow  which  can 
only  be  known  to  the  soul  that  has  loved  and  sought  the  most 
perfect  thing,  and  beholds  itself  fallen. 

She  had  not  then  seen  —  what  she  saw  afterwards  —  the 
evidence  of  the  Frate's  mental  state  after  he  had  had  thus  to 
lay  his  mouth  in  the  dust.  As  the  days  went  by,  the  reports 
of  new  unpublished  examinations,  eliciting  no  change  of 
confessions,  ceased ;  Savonarola  was  left  alone  in  his  prison 
and  allowed  pen  and  ink  for  a  while,  that,  if  he  liked,  he 
might  use  his  poor  bruised  and  strained  right  arm  to  write 
with.  He  wrote ;  but  what  he  Avrote  was  no  vindication  of 
Ms  innocence,  no  protest  against  the  proceedings  used  towards 
him :  it  was  a  continued  colloquy  with  that  divine  purity 
with  which  he  sought  complete  re-union ;  it  was  the  outpour- 
ing of  self-abasement ;  it  was  one  long  cry  for  inward  renova- 
tion. No  lingering  echoes  of  the  old  vehement  self-assertion, 
"Look  at  my  work,  for  it  is  good,  and  those  who  set  their 
faces  against  it  are  the  children  of  the  devil ! "  The  voice  of 
Sadness  tells  him,  '•  God  placed  thee  in  the  midst  of  the 
people  even  as  if  thou  hadst  been  one  of  the  excellent.  In 
this  way  thou  hast  taught  others,  and  hast  failed  to  learn 
thyself.  Thou  hast  cured  others  :  and  thou  thyself  hast  been 
still  diseased.  Thy  heart  was  lifted  up  at  the  beauty  of 
thy  own  deeds,  and  through  this  thou  hast  lost  thy  wisdom 
and  art  become,  and  shalt  be  to  all  eternity,  nothing.  .  .  . 
After  so  many  benefits  with  which  God  has  honored  thee, 
thou  art  fallen  into  the  depths  of  the  sea ;  and  after  so  many 
gifts  bestowed  on  thee,  thou,  by  thy  pride  and  vainglory,  hast 
scandalized  all  the  world."  And  when  Hope  speaks  and 
argues  that  the  divine  love  has  not  forsaken  him,  it  sa3'^s 
nothing  now  of  a  great  work  to  be  done,  but  only  says,  "  Thou 
art  not  forsaken,  else  why  is  thy  heart  bowed  in  penitence  ? 
That  too  is  a  gift." 

There  is  no  jot  of  worthy  evidence  that  from  the  time  of 
his  imprisonment  to  the  supremo  moment,  Savonarola  thought 
or  spoke  of  himself  as  a  martyr.     The  idea  of  martyrdom  had 


THE  LAST  SILENCE.  523 

been  to  him  a  passion  dividing  the  dream  of  the  future  with 
the  triumph  of  beholding  his  work  achieved.  And  now,  in 
place  of  both,  had  come  a  resignation  which  he  called  by  no 
glorifying  name. 

But  therefore  he  tnay  the  more  fitly  be  called  a  martyr  by  his 
fellow-men  to  all  tiyne.  For  power  rose  against  him  not 
because  of  his  sins,  but  because  of  his  greatness  —  not  because 
he  sought  to  deceive  the  world,  but  because  he  sought  to  make 
it  noble.  And  through  that  greatness  of  his  he  endured  a 
double  agony :  not  only  the  reviling,  and  the  torture,  and  the 
death-throe,  but  the  agony  of  sinking  from  the  vision  of 
glorious  achievement  into  that  deep  shadow  where  he  could 
only  say,  "I  count  as  nothing:  darkness  encompasses  me: 
yet  the  light  I  saw  was  the  true  light." 


CHAPTER    LXXII. 

THE     LAST   SILENCE. 

RoMOLA  had  seemed  to  hear,  as  if  they  had  been  a  cry,  the 
words  repeated  to  her  by  many  lips  —  the  words  uttered  by 
Savonarola  when  he  took  leave  of  those  brethren  of  San  Marco 
who  had  come  to  witness  his  signature  of  the  confession : 
"Pray  for  me,  for  God  has  withdrawn  from  me  the  spirit  of 
prophecy." 

Those  words  had  shaken  her  with  new  doubts  as  to  the 
mode  in  which  he  looked  back  at  the  past  in  moments  of 
complete  self-possession.  And  the  doubts  were  strengthened 
by  more  piteous  things  still,  which  soon  reached  her  ears. 

The  nineteenth  of  May  had  come,  and  by  that  day's  sunshine 
there  had  entered  into  Florence  the  two  Papal  Commissaries, 
charged  with  the  completion  of  Savonarola's  trial.  They 
entered  amid  the  acclamations  of  the  people,  calling  for  the 
death  of  the  Frate.  For  now  the  popular  cry  was,  "  It  is  the 
Frate's  deception  that  has  brought  on  all  our  misfortunes ;  let 
him  be  burned,  and  all  things  right  will  be  done,  and  our 
evils  will  cease." 

The  next  day  it  is  well  certified  that  there  was  fresh  and 
fresh  torture  of  the  shattered  sensitive  frame  :  and  now,  at 
the  first  sight  of  the  horrible  implements,  Savonarola,  in  con- 
vulsed agitation,  fell  on  his  knees,  and  in  brief  passionate 


524  ROMOLA. 

words  retracted  his  confession,  declared  that  he  had  spoken 
falsely  in  denying  his  prophetic  gift,  and  that  if  he  suffered, 
he  would  suffer  for  the  truth  — "  The  things  that  I  have 
spoken,  I  had  them  from  God." 

But  not  the  less  the  torture  was  laid  upon  him,  and  when 
he  was  under  it  he  was  asked  why  he  had  uttered  those 
retracting  words.  Men  were  not  demons  in  those  days,  and 
yet  nothing  but  confessions  of  guilt  were  held  a  reason  for 
release  from  torture.  The  answer  came  :  "  I  said  it  that  I 
might  seem  good ;  tear  me  no  more,  I  will  tell  you  the  truth." 

There  were  Florentine  assessors  at  this  new  trial,  and  those 
words  of  twofold  retractation  had  soon  spread.  They  filled 
Romola  with  dismayed  uncertainty. 

''  But  "  —  it  flashed  across  her  —  "  there  will  come  a 
moment  when  he  may  speak.  When  there  is  no  dread  hang- 
ing over  him  but  the  dread  of  falsehood,  when  they  have 
brought  him  into  the  presence  of  death,  when  he  is  lifted 
above  the  people,  and  looks  on  them  for  the  last  time,  they 
cannot  hinder  him  from  speaking  a  last  decisive  word.  I  will 
be  there." 

Three  days  after,  on  the  twenty-third  of  May,  1498,  there 
was  again  a  long  narrow  platform  stretching  across  the  great 
piazza,  from  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  towards  the  Tetta  de'  Pisani. 
But  there  was  no  grove  of  fuel  as  before  :  instead  of  that, 
there  was  one  great  heap  of  fuel  placed  on  the  circular  area 
which  made  the  termination  of  the  long  narrow  platform. 
And  above  this  heap  of  fuel  rose  a  gibbet  with  three  halters 
on  it ;  a  gibbet  which,  having  two  arms,  still  looked  so  much 
like  a  cross  as  to  make  some  beholders  uncomfortable,  though 
one  arm  had  been  truncated  to  avoid  the  resemblance. 

On  the  marble  terrace  of  the  Palazzo  were  three  tribunals ; 
one  near  the  door  for  the  Bishop,  who  was  to  perform  the 
ceremony  of  degradation  on  Fra  Girolamo  and  the  two  breth- 
ren who  were  to  suffer  as  his  followers  and  accomplices ; 
another  for  the  Papal  Commissaries,  who  were  to  pronounce 
them  heretics  and  schismatics,  and  deliver  them  over  to  the 
secular  arm ;  and  a  third,  close  to  Marzocco,  at  the  corner  of 
the  terrace  where  the  platform  began,  for  the  Gonfaloniere, 
and  the  Eight  who  were  to  pronounce  the  sentence  of  death. 

Again  the  Piazza  was  thronged  with  expectant  faces  :  again 
there  was  to  be  a  great  fire  kindled.  In  the  majority  of  the 
crowd  that  pressed  around  the  gibbet  the  expectation  was  that 
of  ferocious  hatred,  or  of  mere  hard  curiosity  to  behold  a  bar- 
barous sight.     But  there  were  still  many  spectators  on  the 


THE  LAST  SILENCE.  525 

wide  pavement,  on  the  roofs,  and  at  the  windows,  who,  in  the 
midst  of  their  bitter  grief  and  their  own  endurance  of  insult 
as  hypocritical  Piagnoni,  were  not  without  a  lingering  hope, 
even  at  this  eleventh  hour,  that  God  would  interpose,  by  some 
sign,  to  manifest  their  beloved  prophet  as  His  servant.  And 
there  were  yet  more  who  looked  forward  with  trembling  eager- 
ness, as  Komola  did,  to  that  final  moment  when  Savonarola 
might  say,  "  0,  people,  I  was  innocent  of  deceit." 

Romola  was  at  a  window  on  the  north  side  of  the  Piazza, 
far  away  from  the  marble  terrace  where  the  tribunals  stood  5 
and  near  her,  also  looking  on  in  painful  doubt  concerning  the 
man  who  had  won  his  early  reverence,  was  a  young  Florentine 
of  two  and  twenty,  named  Jacopo  Nardi,  afterwards  to  deserve 
honor  as  one  of  the  very  few  Avho,  feeling  Fra  Girolamo's 
eminence,  have  written  about  him  with  the  simple  desire  to 
be  veracious.  He  had  said  to  Romola,  with  respectful  gentle- 
ness, when  he  saw  the  struggle  in  her  between  her  shuddering 
horror  of  the  scene  and  her  yearning  to  witness  what  might 
happen  in  the  last  moment,  — 

"  Madonna,  there  is  no  need  for  you  to  look  at  these  cruel 
things.  I  will  tell  you  when  he  comes  out  of  the  Palazzo. 
Trust  to  me ;  I  know  what  you  would  see." 

Romola  covered  her  face,  but  the  hootings  that  seemed  to 
make  the  hideous  scene  still  visible  could  not  be  shut  out. 
At  last  her  arm  was  touched,  and  she  heard  the  words,  "  He 
comes."  She  looked  towards  the  Palace,  and  could  see  Savon- 
arola led  out  in  his  Dominican  garb ;  could  see  him  standing 
before  the  Bishop,  and  being  stripped  of  the  black  mantle,  the 
white  scapulary,  and  long  white  tunic,  till  he  stood  in  a  close 
woollen  under-tunic  that  told  of  no  sacred  office,  no  rank.  He 
had  been  degraded,  and  cut  off  from  the  Church  Militant. 

The  baser  part  of  the  multitude  delight  in  degradations, 
apart  from  any  hatred ;  it  is  the  satire  they  best  understand. 
There  was  a  fresh  hoot  of  triumph  as  the  three  degraded 
brethren  passed  on  to  the  tribunal  of  the  Papal  Commissaries, 
who  were  to  pronounce  them  schismatics  and  heretics.  Did 
not  the  prophet  look  like  a  schismatic  and  heretic  now  ?  It 
is  easy  to  believe  in  the  damnable  state  of  a  man  who  stands 
stripped  and  degraded. 

Then  the  third  tribunal  was  passed  — that  of  the  Florentine 
officials  who  were  to  pronounce  sentence,  and  amongst  whom, 
even  at  her  distance,  Romola  could  discern  the  odious  figure 
of  Dolfo  Spini,  indued  in  the  grave  black  lucco,  as  one  of  the 
Eight. 


626  ROMOLA. 

Then  the  three  figures,  in  their  close  white  raiment,  trod 
their  way  along  the  platform,  amidst  yells  and  grating  tones 
of  insult. 

"  Cover  your  eyes,  madonna,"  said  Jacopo  Nardi ;  "  Fra 
Girolamo  will  be  the  last." 

It  was  not  long  before  she  had  to  uncover  them  again. 
Savonarola  was  there.  He  was  not  far  off  her  now.  He  had 
mounted  the  steps ;  she  could  see  him  look  round  on  the  mul- 
titude. 

But  in  the  same  moment  expectation  died,  and  she  only 
saw  what  he  was  seeing  —  torches  waving  to  kindle  the  fuel 
beneath  his  dead  body,  faces  glaring  with  a  yet  worse  light ; 
she  only  heard  what  he  was  hearing  —  gross  jests,  taunts,  and 
curses. 

The  moment  was  past.  Her  face  was  covered  again,  and 
she  only  knew  that  Savonarola's  voice  had  passed  into  eternal 
silence. 


EPILOGUE.  627 


EPILOGUE. 

On  the  evening  of  the  twenty-second  of  May,  1509,  five 
persons,  of  whose  history  we  have  known  something,  were 
seated  in  a  handsome  upper  room  opening  on  to  a  loggia 
which,  at  its  right-hand  corner,  looked  all  along  the  Borgo 
Pinti,  and  over  the  city  gate  towards  Fiesole,  and  the  solemn 
heights  beyond  it. 

At  one  end  of  the  room  was  an  archway  opening  into  a 
narrow  inner  room,  hardly  more  than  a  recess,  where  the  light 
fell  from  above  on  a  small  altar  covered  with  fair  white  linen. 
Over  the  altar  was  a  picture,  discernible  at  the  distance  where 
the  little  party  sat  only  as  the  small  full-length  portrait  of  a 
Dominican  Brother.  For  it  was  shaded  from  the  light  above 
by  overhanging  branches  and  wreaths  of  flowers,  and  the  fresh 
tapers  below  it  were  unlit.  But  it  seemed  that  the  decoration 
of  the  altar  and  its  recess  was  not  complete.  For  part  of  the 
floor  was  strewn  with  a  confusion  of  flowers  and  green  boughs, 
and  among  them  sat  a  delicate  blue-eyed  girl  of  thirteen,  toss- 
ing her  long  light-brown  hair  out  of  her  eyes,  as  she  made 
selections  for  the  wreaths  she  was  weaving,  or  looked  up  at 
her  mother's  work  in  the  same  kind,  and  told  her  how  to  do 
it  with  a  little  air  of  instruction. 

For  that  mother  was  not  very  clever  at  weaving  flowers  or 
at  any  other  work.  Tessa's  fingers  had  not  become  more 
adroit  with  the  years  —  only  very  much  fatter.  She  got  on 
slowly  and  turned  her  head  about  a  good  deal,  and  asked 
Ninna's  opinion  with  much  deference  ;  for  Tessa  never  ceased 
to  be  astonished  at  the  wisdom  of  her  children.  She  still 
wore  her  contadina  gown :  it  was  only  broader  than  the  old 
one  ;  and  there  was  the  silver  pin  in  her  rough  curly  brown 
hair,  and  round  her  neck  the  memorable  necklace,  with  a  red 
cord  under  it,  that  ended  mysteriously  in  her  bosom.  Her 
rounded  face  wore  even  a  more  perfect  look  of  childish  content 
than  in  her  younger  days :  everybody  was  so  good  in  the 
world,  Tessa  thought ;  even  Monna  Brigida  never  found  fault 
with  her  now,  and  did  little  else  than  sleep,  which  was  an 
amiable  practice  in  everybody,  and  one  that  Tessa  liked  for 
herself. 


528  ROMOLA. 

Monna  Brigida  was  asleep  at  this  moment,  in  a  straight- 
backed  armchair,  a  couple  of  3'ards  off.  Her  hair,  parting 
backward  under  her  black  hood,  had  that  soft  whiteness  which 
is  not  like  snow  or  anything  else,  but  is  simply  the  lovely 
whiteness  of  aged  hair.  Her  chin  had  sunk  on  her  bosom, 
and  her  hands  rested  on  the  elbow  of  her  chair.  She  had  not 
been  weaving  flowers  or  doing  anything  else :  she  had  only 
been  looking  on  as  usual,  and  as  usual  had  fallen  asleep. 

The  other  two  figures  were  seated  farther  off,  at  the  wide 
doorway  that  opened  on  to  the  loggia.  Lillo  sat  on  the  ground 
with  his  back  against  the  angle  of  the  door-post,  and  his  long 
legs  stretched  out,  while  he  held  a  large  book  open  on  his 
knee,  and  occasionally  made  a  dash  with  his  hand  at  an  inquis- 
itive fly,  with  an  air  of  interest  stronger  than  that  excited  by 
the  finely  printed  copy  of  Petrarch  which  he  kept  open  at  one 
place,  as  if  he  were  learning  something  by  heart. 

Romola  sat  nearly  opposite  Lillo,  but  she  was  not  observing 
him.  Her  hands  were  crossed  on  her  lap  and  her  eyes  were  fixed 
absently  on  the  distant  mountains  :  she  was  evidently  uncon- 
scious of  anything  around  her.  An  eager  life  had  left  its 
marks  upon  her :  the  finely  moulded  cheek  had  sunk  a  little, 
the  golden  crown  was  less  massive  :  but  there  was  a  placidity 
in  Romola's  face  which  had  never  belonged  to  it  in  youth.  It 
is  but  once  that  we  can  know  our  worst  sorrows,  and  Romola 
had  known  them  while  life  was  new. 

Absorbed  in  this  way,  she  was  not  at  first  aware  that  Lillo 
had  ceased  to  look  at  his  book,  and  was  watching  her  with  a 
slightly  impatient  air,  which  meant  that  he  wanted  to  talk  to 
her,  but  was  not  quite  sure  whether  she  would  like  that  enter- 
tainment just  now.  But  persevering  looks  make  themselves 
felt  at  last.  Romola  did  presently  turn  away  her  eyes  from 
the  distance  and  met  Lillo's  impatient  dark  gaze  with  a 
brighter  and  brighter  smile.  He  shuffled  along  the  floor,  still 
keeping  the  book  on  his  lap,  till  he  got  close  to  her  and  lodged 
his  chin  on  her  knee. 

"  What  is  it,  Lillo  ?  "  said  Romola,  pulling  his  hair  back 
from  his  brow.  Lillo  was  a  handsome  lad,  but  his  features 
were  turning  out  to  be  more  massive  and  less  regular  than 
his  father's.  The  blood  of  the  Tuscan  peasant  was  in  his 
veins. 

"  Mamma  Romola,  what  am  I  to  be  ?  "  he  said,  well  con- 
tented that  there  was  a  prospect  of  talking  till  it  would  be  too 
late  to  con  "  Spirto  gentil "  any  longor. 

"  What  should  you  like  to   be,  Lillo  ?     You  might  be   a 


EPILOGUE.  629 

scholar.  My  father  was  a  scholar,  you  know,  and  taught 
me  a  great  deal.  That  is  the  reason  why  I  can  teach 
you." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lillo,  rather  hesitatingly.  "But  he  is  old  and 
blind  in  the  picture.     Did  he  get  a  great  deal  of  glory  ?  " 

"  Not  much,  Lillo.  The  world  was  not  always  very  kind  to 
him,  and  he  saw  meaner  men  than  himself  put  into  higher 
places,  because  they  could  flatter  and  say  what  was  false. 
And  then  his  dear  son  thought  it  right  to  leave  him  and 
become  a  monk ;  and  after  that,  my  father,  being  blind  and 
lonely,  felt  unable  to  do  the  things  that  would  have  made  his 
learning  of  greater  use  to  men,  so  that  he  might  still  have 
lived  in  his  works  after  he  was  in  his  grave," 

"  I  should  not  like  that  sort  of  life,"  said  Lillo.  "  I  should 
like  to  be  something  that  would  make  me  a  great  man,  and 
very  happy  besides  —  something  that  would  not  hinder  me 
from  having  a  good  deal  of  pleasure." 

"  That  is  not  easy,  my  Lillo.  It  is  only  a  poor  sort  of  hap- 
piness that  could  ever  come  by  caring  very  much  about  our 
own  narrow  pleasures.  We  can  only  have  the  highest  happi- 
ness, such  as  goes  along  with  being  a  great  man,  by  having 
wide  thoughts,  and  much  feeling  for  the  rest  of  the  world  as 
well  as  ourselves ;  and  this  sort  of  happiness  often  brings  so 
much  pain  with  it,  that  we  can  only  tell  it  from  pain  by  its 
being  what  we  would  choose  before  everything  else,  because 
our  souls  see  it  is  good.  There  are  so  many  things  wrong  and 
difficult  in  the  world,  that  no  man  can  be  great  —  he  can  hardly 
keep  himself  from  wickedness  —  unless  he  gives  up  thinking 
much  about  pleasure  or  rewards,  and  gets  strength  to  endure 
what  is  hard  and  painful.  My  father  had  the  greatness  that 
belongs  to  integrity  ;  he  chose  poverty  and  obscurity  rather 
than  falsehood.  And  there  was  Fra  Girolamo  —  you  know 
why  I  keep  to-morrow  sacred :  he  had  the  greatness  which  be- 
longed to  a  life  spent  in  struggling  against  powerful  wrong, 
and  in  trying  to  raise  men  to  the  highest  deeds  they  are  capa- 
ble of.  And  so,  my  Lillo,  if  you  mean  to  act  nobly  and  seek 
to  know  the  best  things  God  has  put  within  reach  of  men,  you 
must  learn  to  fix  your  mind  on  that  end,  and  not  on  what  will 
happen  to  you  because  of  it.  And  remember,  if  you  were  to 
choose  something  lower,  and  make  it  the  rule  of  your  life  to 
seek  your  own  pleasure  and  escape  from  what  is  disagreeable, 
calamity  might  come  just  the  same  ;  and  it  would  be  calamity 
falling  on  a  base  mind,  which  is  the  one  form  of  sorrow  that 
has  no  balm  in  it,  and  that  may  well  make  a  man  say,  —  'It 


530  ROMOLA. 

would  have  been  better  for  me  if  I  had  never  been  born.'  I 
will  tell  you  something,  Lillo." 

Romola  paused  for  a  moment.  She  had  taken  Lillo's 
cheeks  between  her  hands,  and  his  young  eyes  were  meeting 
hers. 

"  There  was  a  man  to  whom  I  was  very  near,  so  that  I  could 
see  a  great  deal  of  his  life,  who  made  almost  every  one  fond  of 
him,  for  he  was  young,  and  clever,  and  beautiful,  and  his  man- 
ners to  all  were  gentle  and  kind.  I  believe,  when  I  first  knew 
him,  he  never  thought  of  anything  cruel  or  base.  But  because 
he  tried  to  slip  away  from  everything  that  was  unpleasant, 
and  cared  for  nothing  else  so  much  as  his  own  safety,  he  came 
at  last  to  commit  some  of  the  basest  deeds  —  such  as  make 
men  infamous.  He  denied  his  father,  and  left  him  to  misery ; 
he  betrayed  every  trust  that  was  reposed  in  him,  that  he  might 
keep  himself  safe  and  get  rich  and  prosperous.  Yet  calamity 
overtook  him." 

Again  Komola  paused.  Her  voice  was  unsteady,  and  Lillo 
was  looking  up  at  her  with  awed  wonder. 

"  Another  time,  my  Lillo  —  I  will  tell  you  another  time. 
See,  there  are  our  old  Piero  di  Cosimo  and  Nello  coming  up 
the  Borgo  Pinti,  bringing  us  their  flowers.  Let  us  go  and 
wave  our  hands  to  them,  that  they  may  know  we  see 
them." 

"  How  queer  old  Piero  is ! "  said  Lillo,  as  they  stood  at  the 
corner  of  the  loggia,  watching  the  advancing  figures.  "  He 
abuses  you  for  dressing  the  altar,  and  thinking  so  much  of  Fra 
Girolamo,  and  yet  he  brings  you  the  flowers." 

"  Never  mind,"  said  Romola.  "  There  are  many  good  peo- 
ple who  did  not  love  Fra  Girolamo.  Perhaps  I  should  never 
have  learned  to  love  him  if  he  had  not  helped  me  when  I  was 
in  great  need." 


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